Gender inequalities among authors who contributed equally

We analyzed 2898 scientific papers published between 1995 and 2017 in which two or more authors shared the first author position. For papers in which the first and second authors made equal contributions, mixed-gender combinations were most frequent, followed by male-male and then female-female author combinations. For mixed-gender combinations, more male authors were in the first position, although the disparity decreased over time. For papers in which three or more authors made equal contributions, there were more male authors than female authors in the first position and more all-male than all-female author combinations. The gender inequalities observed among authors who made equal contributions are not consistent with random or alphabetical ordering of authors. These results raise concerns about female authors not receiving proper credit for publications and suggest a need for journals to request clarity on the method used to decide author order among those who contributed equally.

Authorship matrix: a rational approach to quantify individual contributions and responsibilities in multi-author scientific articles

We propose a rational method for addressing an important question-who deserves to be an author of a scientific article? We review various contentious issues associated with this question and recommend that the scientific community should view authorship in terms of contributions and responsibilities, rather than credits. We propose a new paradigm that conceptually divides a scientific article into four basic elements: ideas, work, writing, and stewardship. We employ these four fundamental elements to modify the well-known International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines. The modified ICMJE guidelines are then used as the basis to develop an approach to quantify individual contributions and responsibilities in multi-author articles. The outcome of the approach is an authorship matrix, which can be used to answer several nagging questions related to authorship.

The effects of diversity and network ties on innovations: The emergence of a new scientific field

This study examines the influence of different types of diversity, both observable and unobservable, on the creation of innovative ideas. Our framework draws upon theory and research on information processing, social categorization, coordination, and homophily to posit the influence of cognitive, gender, and country diversity on innovation. Our longitudinal model is based on a unique dataset of 1,354 researchers who helped create the new scientific field of Oncofertility, by collaborating on 469 publications over a four-year period. We capture the differences among researchers along cognitive, country and gender dimensions, as well as examine how the resulting diversity or homophily influences the formation of collaborative innovation networks. We find that innovation, operationalized as publishing in a new scientific discipline, benefits from both homophily and diversity. Homophily in country of residence and working with prior collaborators help reduce uncertainty in the interactions associated with innovation, while diversity in knowledge enables the recombinant knowledge required for innovation.

Contributorships Are Not 'Weighable' to be Equal

A new trend to assign some authors as 'first co-authors' is noticeable in scientific publications as a statement highlighting that two or more authors 'contributed equally' to a reported work. However, the requirements of scientific rigor, honesty, and accuracy in academic standards make such statements invalid and, thus, should be avoided. A potential solution is to specify the role of each co-author, from study conception to communication of results, and let readers judge the importance of each contribution by themselves. Alternatively, authors should demonstrate how they contributed 'equally' when they are defined as 'equal contributors'.

The emergence of team science: Understanding the state of adoption research through social network analysis

The notion of team science has recently gained popularity in European and American health sciences considering increasing evidence that scientific collaboration produces higher-impact research and that complex scientific problems are better investigated by interdisciplinary teams. While publication metrics indicate adoption research is expanding, the comprehensive structure of adoption studies as a scientific field has not been formally evaluated for collaborative and cross-disciplinary activity. This article aims to elucidate the structure, composition, and dynamics of scientific relationships within adoption research that may inform research and practice strategies, competencies, and cohesion within the field. Using social network analysis, we extracted bibliographic data on 2767 peer-reviewed adoption-related articles from 1930s to 2014 and evaluated the resulting co-authorship and co-citation networks. We found that adoption research has grown substantially over the last 25 years, and is conducted in varied disciplines, with increasing collaboration across geography and disciplinary areas. The co-authorship and co-citation networks are approaching numeric thresholds and structural configurations distinctive of well-established and more institutionalized fields of study. These findings reveal the maturation of adoption studies as a team science and argue for the development of institutional mechanisms that support such evolution. Implications for professional and research planning are discussed.

Bibliometric and Visualized Analysis of China's Smart Grid Research 2008-2018

Smart grid (SG) offers great advantages in renewable energy integration and has become a popular trend of modern power development recently; meanwhile China is the second most prolific country using SG. Hence the purpose of this study is to get access to the research status, development, and trends of SG in China based on the 3,558 published papers obtained from the WOS core library and application of the bibliometric method and visualization analysis software VOSviewer and alluvial diagrams. The results consequently demonstrate some valuable insights. Firstly, the volume of publications in China's SG is on the rise, and the cooperation between countries and institutions is getting closer. Besides, the research hotspots have obvious interdisciplinary characteristics. Taking into consideration the impact of the information and communication field on SG, the major current research hotspots include wireless sensor network (WSN), internet of things (IoT), smart meter, big data, and security. Taking into consideration the impact of SG on traditional power systems, the main hotspots cover demand response, micro-grid, distributed generation, and electric vehicle (EV). Furthermore, China's SG research shows a trend from a single theme to diversified development. The research themes during 2010–2018 have deepened with most studies focusing on the traditional power system. The findings of this paper provide some enlightenment on China's SG research, which can present scholars with an overview of the macro perspective, help them understand the latest development of the SG field in China and offer useful guidance for future research in this subject as well.

Inflated Co-authorship Introduces Bias to Current Scientometric Indices

BACKGROUND

Although scientometry gradually became prevalent way of measuring one's research output, there are many inherent drawbacks in main indices that are used: impact factor, number of citations, number of published papers and Hirsch's index.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to analyze effects of inflated co-authorship on values of scientometric indices among authors in biomedicine who participated in published papers with more than 30 co-authors.

METHODS

The study was of cross-sectional type, based on 100 publications randomly extracted from the MEDLINE database. The inclusion criterion was publication with more than 30 authors. The studies with topics not related to humans were excluded from further analysis.

RESULTS

On average about 10% of papers published by the surveyed authors had more than 30 co-authors, but these papers brought more than 40% of all citations and more than 40% of Hirsch's index attributed to these authors. The duration of scientific activity was well correlated to number of citations, Hirsch's index and the number of publications themselves with 30 or less co-authors, while the correlation did not exist with number of citations, Hirsch's index and the number of publications with more than 30 authors. In summary, publications with > 30 authors carry more scientometric points than publications with less co-authors, and the researchers with shorter scientific activity had larger scientometric benefit from publications with more than 30 authors than senior researchers.

CONCLUSION

Unjustified and prolific co-authorship is one of methods for inflation of scientometric indices that are not further reflecting true quality of research output of an individual. Further improvement of scientometric indicators may prevent unjustified co-authorship if it reflects the work invested in a research result.

Bibliometric profile of the African Academy of Sciences medical and health sciences fellows

The African Academy of Sciences (AAS) is the preeminent science academy on the African continent, but there is currently no information on the academic productivity of the fellowship members. This study investigated the bibliometric parameters of the AAS medical and health sciences fellows. The demographic information (year of induction, gender, and region of employment in Africa) of the 80 medical and health sciences fellows were obtained from the AAS website. Subsequently, the bibliometric information (total number of publications, H-index scores, citation, and co-authorship counts) were extracted from the Scopus database. The majority of the fellows were from the East (36%) and West (33%) African regions (χ2 = p < 0.001); the North (6%) and Central (4%) regions were vastly underrepresented. Although only 34% of the AAS fellows were women, there was no statistically significant difference (p > 0.05) in the bibliometric parameters of both genders. The year of induction as a fellow and region of employment in Africa significantly (p < 0.05) influenced the bibliometric parameters. For all the fellows combined, their H-index mean (SD) score is 27.9 (17.0), while the median score for the total number of publications is 100, H-index is 27.5, and the citation and co-authorship count is 2,894 and 446, respectively. The fellows from the West African region had the highest number of publications (Mean = 212), citations (Mean = 9,437), and co-authorship count (Mean = 975), and the South African fellows had the highest H-index score (Mean = 40.8). The data presented provide insight into the bibliometric productivity of African scientists compared with their peers from other science academies around the world. Similarly, the data may assist burgeoning scientists aspiring to be AAS fellow set realistic goals toward achieving the stipulated H-index benchmarks.

Gender gaps in Australian research publishing, citation and co-authorship

Despite improvement in gender inequality in Australian science, the problem has not been fully addressed yet. To better understand the nature of gender inequality in Australian science, all gendered Australian first authored articles published between 2010 and 2020 and indexed in the Dimensions database were analysed. Field of Research (FoR) was used as the subject classification of articles and Field Citation Ratio (FCR) was used for citation comparison. Overall, the ratio of female to male first authored articles increased over the years, and this was true for all FoRs except for information and computing sciences. The ratio of single-authored articles by females was also improved over the study period. Females appeared to have a citation advantage, using Field Citation Ratio, over males in a few FoRs including mathematical sciences, chemical sciences, technology, built environment and design, studies in human society, law and legal studies, and studies in creative arts and writing. The average FCR for female first authored articles was greater than the average FCR for male first authored articles, including in a few fields such mathematical sciences where male authors outperformed females in terms of the number of articles.

[Equally or equitably? Author roles and co-author shares in scientific publication]

In the last decades the share of co-authored and, particularly, multi-authored papers has increased immensely. The paper deals with the causes and consequences of this phenomenon, specifically with those connected with scientometric analyses. Possibilities for fractional count of publications and citations, as well as problems of interpreting h-index and self-citation in case of multi-authored papers are focused upon.

Assessing Research Collaboration through Co-authorship Network Analysis

Interdisciplinary research collaboration is needed to perform transformative science and accelerate innovation. The Science of Team Science strives to investigate, evaluate, and foster team science, including institutional policies that may promote or hinder collaborative interdisciplinary research and the resources and infrastructure needed to promote team science within and across institutions. Social network analysis (SNA) has emerged as a useful method to measure interdisciplinary science through the evaluation of several types of collaboration networks, including co-authorship networks. Likewise, research administrators are responsible for conducting rigorous evaluation of policies and initiatives. Within this paper, we present a case study using SNA to evaluate inter-programmatic collaboration (evidenced by co-authoring scientific papers) from 2007-2014 among scientists who are members of four formal research programs at an NCI-designated Cancer Center, the Markey Cancer Center (MCC) at the University of Kentucky. We evaluate change in network descriptives over time and implement separable temporal exponential-family random graph models (STERGMs) to estimate the effect of author and network variables on the tendency to form a co-authorship tie. We measure the diversity of the articles published over time (Blau's Index) to understand whether the changes in the co-authorship network are reflected in the diversity of articles published by research members. Over the 8-year period, we found increased inter-programmatic collaboration among research members as evidenced by co-authorship of published scientific papers. Over time, MCC Members collaborated more with others outside of their research program and outside their initial dense co-authorship groups, however tie formation continues to be driven by co-authoring with individuals of the same research program and academic department. Papers increased in diversity over time on all measures with the exception of author gender. This inter-programmatic research was fostered by policy changes in cancer center administration encouraging interdisciplinary research through both informal (e.g., annual retreats, seminar series) and formal (e.g., requiring investigators from more than two research programs on applications for pilot funding) means. Within this cancer center, interdisciplinary co-authorship increased over time as policies encouraging this collaboration were implemented. Yet, there is room for improvement in creating more interdisciplinary and diverse ties between research program members.

Bibliometric and social network analysis of a Clinical and Translational Resource awardee: An Oklahoma experience 2014-2021

Background

Social Network Analysis is a method of analyzing coauthorship networks or relationships through graph theory. Institutional Development Award (IDeA) Networks for Clinical and Translational Research (IDeA-CTR) was designed to expand the capability for clinical and translational research to enhance National Institutes of Health funding.

Methods

All publications from a cohort of clinical and translational scientists in Oklahoma were collected through a PubMed search for 2014 through 2021 in October 2022. For this study's bibliometric portion, we pulled the citations from iCite in November of 2022.

Results

There were 2,391 articles published in 1,019 journals. The number of papers published by year increased from 56 in 2014 to 448 in 2021. The network had an average of 6.4 authors per paper, with this increasing by year from 5.3 in 2014 to 6.9 in 2021. The average journal impact factor for the overall network was 7.19, with a range from 0.08 to 202.73. The Oklahoma Shared Clinical and Translational Resources (OSCTR) network is a small world network with relatively weak ties.

Conclusions

This study provides an overview of coauthorship in an IDeA-CTR collaboration. We show the growth and structure of coauthorship in OSCTR, highlighting the importance of understanding and fostering collaboration within research networks.

Drought and sorghum: a bibliometric analysis using VOS viewer

Drought has emerged as a significant global concern in recent years, leading to a proliferation of research on sorghum, an important drought resistant crop. Consequently, conducting a bibliometric analysis of said publications has the potential to yield insights into current areas of interest and potential avenues for future research. The present study utilized the Web of Science database to gather literature published between the years 2000 and 2022. The search terms 'drought' AND 'sorghum' was employed to identify relevant publications and as a result, 1731 publications were obtained. The bibliometric analysis of the obtained articles was conducted using VOSviewer software (1.6.19). The keyword 'sorghum' was found to have the highest frequency, with a total link strength of 4238. This keyword exhibited a strong association with the terms 'drought' and 'drought tolerance'. The average number of citations for the 100 most-cited articles was 509.2. The journal Crop Science attained the top position with 60 published articles and secured the highest number of citations with a count of 2795. The academic works of Graeme L. Hammer, comprising 40 articles affiliated with the University of Queensland (UQ), have garnered a total of 3612 citations. Similarly, the same university has produced 112 articles that have been cited 5551 times, thereby establishing it as the most frequently cited organization, with Hammer receiving the highest citation count. UQ had a total of 41 collaborators, with a cumulative link strength of 115. The USA has the highest number of articles pertaining to drought and sorghum. The published literature has focused on abiotic stress tolerance, genetic analysis, and physiological traits, among others. It is anticipated that there will be a substantial rise in the quantity of worldwide publications pertaining to drought and sorghum. The USA offered a significant contribution to this emerging field.Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma.

Individuals with developmental disabilities make their own stylistic contributions to text written with physical facilitation

Introduction

For individuals with developmental disabilities (DD) such as autism, Down syndrome, or cerebral palsy, learning to express with language is a two-fold challenge because atypical cognitive capacity is compounded by sensorimotor coordination deficits. One approach to assisting linguistic expression in these individuals is to physically support them, for example, by touching their torso or arm as they type. The neurophysiological mechanism of such motor assistance for linguistic expression is not known, but recently it has been proposed that light touch may reduce the cognitive load associated with the sensorimotor coordination of typing, thereby releasing shared cognitive resources to the task of generating content. Historically, there has been significant controversy over the extent to which the facilitator and not the user authors texts written with touch assistance. User groups and a few researchers have argued that the user can express their thoughts through such techniques, but the prevailing view among researchers is that these texts are entirely the by-products of the facilitators' ideomotor cueing of users' movements. If the user is not a source of the produced text, the only linguistic style detectable in the text should be the facilitator's.

Methods

Here, we use quantitative linguistic analysis to investigate whether DD users typing text with touch assistance exhibit their own stylistic signatures alongside those of their facilitators. In Study 1, we investigate whether the stylometric fingerprints of a set of users are detectable when they are all assisted by the same facilitator. In Study 2, we examine whether the users' stylometric characteristics are retained even when they are assisted by multiple facilitators.

Results

Across both studies, the results show that the users' stylistic signature is detectable alongside that of facilitators. This suggests that the texts generated by DD users withphysical assistance should be viewed as coauthored rather than wholly authored by facilitators via ideomotor processes.

Discussion

The users' stylometric presence in these texts suggests that touch-assistance may serve as a developmental scaffold and should be re-appraised as a teaching aid even where unassisted linguistic expression is an unlikely end goal.

Perils of Precipitate Publication: Fraudulent and Substandard COVID-19 Research

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an environment highly conducive to substandard and fraudulent research. The incentives and temptations for the unethical are substantial. The articles published during 2020 in The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine that were based on spurious datasets, allegedly hosted by a cloud-based health care analytics platform, are deeply confronting for research integrity. They illustrate the perils of precipitate publication, inadequate peer-reviewing and co-authorship without proper assumption of responsibility. A period of crisis such as that in existence during the COVID-19 pandemic calls for high-quality research that is robustly evaluated. It is not a time for panic to propel premature publication or for relaxation in scholarly standards. Any other approach will replicate errors of the past and result in illusory research breakthroughs to global detriment.

Evolution of documents related to the influence of physical activity and functional capacity throughout the aging process: a bibliometric review

Physical inactivity can lead to frailty and negative health outcomes in middle-aged to older adults. Sedentary individuals have double the risk of death compared to those who engage in high levels of physical activity (PA). The advantages of practicing PA in older age are significant, with regular, moderate-intensity activity (150 min per week)being consistently linked with a decreased risk of chronic disease, cognitive decline, and mortality. Therefore, the study aimed to carry out a bibliometric review related to the terms "Physical activity," "Functional capacity" and "Aging" including all the documents published in the Web of Science Core Collection until 31st December 2023. The sample was made up of 231 studies related to the topic. The results reported that the first document was published in 1994. However, there was no continuity in the publication of the documents till 1998, which was the first year with at least one document published. Considering 1998 as the first year, it is observed an exponential growth of 77.4%, between the oldest (1997-2008) and contemporaneous studies (2008-2023), in which "Geriatric Gerontology" was the Web of Science category with the highest number of documents (n = 59). The journal "Experimental Gerontology" was associated with the largest number of published documents (n = 7), being indexed in Quartil 2. The years 2009 had the highest number of citations (n = 1811), with a total of 7 documents published and 2018 with the higher number of documents (n = 25). These results reported the importance of PA in elderly people, and how it influences the risk of falls, improving the balance and the functional capacity. Thus, it is important to carry out programmes to promote physical activity to this population and reduce the risk of falls and the presence of diseases.