1 research outputs found
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 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