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Authorship Inflation in Medical Publications

The number of authors per manuscript in peer-reviewed medical journals has increased substantially in the last several decades. Several reasons have been offered to explain this authorship growth, including increased researcher collaboration, honorary authorship driven by increased pressures for fun...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Tilak, Gaurie, Prasad, Vinay, Jena, Anupam B.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4943864/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26228035
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0046958015598311
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author Tilak, Gaurie
Prasad, Vinay
Jena, Anupam B.
author_facet Tilak, Gaurie
Prasad, Vinay
Jena, Anupam B.
author_sort Tilak, Gaurie
collection PubMed
description The number of authors per manuscript in peer-reviewed medical journals has increased substantially in the last several decades. Several reasons have been offered to explain this authorship growth, including increased researcher collaboration, honorary authorship driven by increased pressures for funding and promotion, the belief that including senior authors will facilitate publication, and the growing complexity of medical research. It is unknown, however, whether authorship has grown over time due to growing complexity of published academic articles, in which case growth could be warranted, or whether it has grown due to pressures of funding and academic promotion, which have created “authorship inflation.” To answer this question, we analyzed data on authorship count, study type, and size of study population for the first 50 original articles published in each decade during 1960-2010 in 3 major medical journals. Within each type of study we considered (eg, randomized trials, observational studies, etc), average authorship rose more than 3-fold during this period. Similar growth persisted after adjustment for changes in study population sizes over time. Our findings suggest that increasing research complexity is an inadequate explanation for authorship growth. Instead, growth in authorship appears inflationary.
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spelling pubmed-49438642016-07-13 Authorship Inflation in Medical Publications Tilak, Gaurie Prasad, Vinay Jena, Anupam B. Inquiry Research Letter The number of authors per manuscript in peer-reviewed medical journals has increased substantially in the last several decades. Several reasons have been offered to explain this authorship growth, including increased researcher collaboration, honorary authorship driven by increased pressures for funding and promotion, the belief that including senior authors will facilitate publication, and the growing complexity of medical research. It is unknown, however, whether authorship has grown over time due to growing complexity of published academic articles, in which case growth could be warranted, or whether it has grown due to pressures of funding and academic promotion, which have created “authorship inflation.” To answer this question, we analyzed data on authorship count, study type, and size of study population for the first 50 original articles published in each decade during 1960-2010 in 3 major medical journals. Within each type of study we considered (eg, randomized trials, observational studies, etc), average authorship rose more than 3-fold during this period. Similar growth persisted after adjustment for changes in study population sizes over time. Our findings suggest that increasing research complexity is an inadequate explanation for authorship growth. Instead, growth in authorship appears inflationary. SAGE Publications 2015-07-29 /pmc/articles/PMC4943864/ /pubmed/26228035 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0046958015598311 Text en © The Author(s) 2015 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Research Letter
Tilak, Gaurie
Prasad, Vinay
Jena, Anupam B.
Authorship Inflation in Medical Publications
title Authorship Inflation in Medical Publications
title_full Authorship Inflation in Medical Publications
title_fullStr Authorship Inflation in Medical Publications
title_full_unstemmed Authorship Inflation in Medical Publications
title_short Authorship Inflation in Medical Publications
title_sort authorship inflation in medical publications
topic Research Letter
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4943864/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26228035
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0046958015598311
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