Evidence map›Paper›PMID 27457939›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016

Kin of coauthorship in five decades of health science literature.

Mattia Prosperi, Iain Buchan, Iuri Fanti, Sandro Meloni, Pietro Palladino, Vetle I Torvik

Open access · greenAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
3citing papers in PubMed
1.8field-weighted citation impact, top 12% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

3 citing papers in PubMed, 12 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. Article
  2. Academic nepotism - all that glitters is not gold.Journal of advances in medical education & professionalism · 2018
    Article
  3. Inappropriate Authorship and Kinship in Research Evaluation.Journal of Korean medical science · 2018
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

6 authors at 6 institutions in 5 countries.

Mattia ProsperiDepartment of Epidemiology, College of Public Health and Health Professions, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32610; Department of Epidemiology, College of Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32610; Centre for Health Informatics, Institute of Population Health, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom; m.prosperi@phhp.ufl.edu.
Iain BuchanCentre for Health Informatics, Institute of Population Health, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom;
Iuri FantiInfectious Diseases Clinic, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Rome 00168, Italy;
Sandro MeloniInstitute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza 50018, Spain; Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza 50009, Spain;
Pietro PalladinoGenomics, Genetics and Biology Innovation Pole, Perugia 06134, Italy;
Vetle I TorvikGraduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820.
Institut thématique Génétique, génomique et bioinformatique · FRUniversidad de Zaragoza · ESUniversity of Florida Health · USUniversity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · USUniversity of Manchester · GBUniversity of the Sacred Heart · JP

Funding

LIFE CYCLE EVENTS, PRODUCTIVITY, AND SCIENTIFIC IMPACTP01AG039347 · NIA · NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH · PI WEINBERG, BRUCE A · 2013 to 2018
$5.4M
Medical Research Council MC_PC_13042Medical Research Council MR/K006665/1NIA NIH HHS P01 AG039347
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Family background-kinship-can propagate careers. The evidence for academic nepotism is littered with complex associations and disputed causal inferences. Surname clustering, albeit with very careful consideration of surnames' flows across regions and time periods, can be used to reflect family ties. We examined surname patterns in the health science literature, by country, across five decades. Over 21 million papers indexed in the MEDLINE/PubMed database were analyzed. We identified relevant country-specific kinship trends over time and found that authors who are part of a kin tend to occupy central positions in their collaborative networks. Just as kin build potent academic networks with their own resources, societies may do well to provide equivalent support for talented individuals with fewer resources, on the periphery of networks.

Indexed as

FamilyAcademies and InstitutesBiomedical ResearchHumansMonte Carlo MethodNamesdemographic modelhealth science literaturekinshipPubMedsocial capital

Identifiers

PMID27457939
PMCPMC4987828
OpenAlexW2498840193

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.