Author Sequence and Credit for Contributions in Multiauthored Publications

作者：Teja Tscharntke, Michael Hochberg, Tatyana A. Rand, Vincent H. Resh, Jochen Krauß · 发表于：PLoS Biology · 年份：2007 · DOI：10.1371/journal.pbio.0050018 · 被引用次数：590 · 研究领域：Biomedical Text Mining and Ontologies、scientometrics and bibliometrics research、Meta-analysis and systematic reviews

The increasing tendency across scientifi c disciplines to write multiauthored papers [1,2] makes the issue of the sequence of contributors' names a major topic both in terms of refl ecting actual contributions and in a posteriori assessments by evaluation committees.Traditionally, the fi rst author contributes most and also receives most of the credit, whereas the position of subsequent authors is usually decided by contribution, alphabetical order, or reverse seniority.Ranking the fi rst or second author in a two-author paper is straightforward, but the meaning of position becomes increasingly arbitrary as the number of authors increases beyond two.Criteria for authorship have been discussed at length, because of the infl ationary increase in the number of authors on papers submitted to biomedical journals and the practice of "gift" authorship [3,4], but a simple way to determine credit associated with the sequence of authors' names is still missing [4-7] (http://www.councilscienceeditors.org).The situation in our area of research-the ecological and environmental sciences-has changed in recent years.Following informal practices in the biomedical sciences, the last author often gets as much credit as the fi rst author, because he or she is assumed to be the driving force, both intellectually and fi nancially, behind the research.Evaluation committees and funding bodies often take last authorship as a sign of successful group leadership and make this a criterion in hiring, gra...