ArticleBMJ open2021
Authorship inequality: a bibliometric study of the concentration of authorship among a diminishing number of individuals in high-impact medical journals, 2008-2019.
Article in BMJ open, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Authority and Authorship: Examining Leadership's Role in Medical Publications.Journal of empirical research on human research ethics : JERHRE · 2026Article
- The Under-representation and Stagnation of Female, Black, and Hispanic Authorship in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2023Article
- Bibliometric analysis of authorship patterns in publications from a research group at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, 2016-2020.BMJ global health · 2023Article
- Scientific Publishing in Biomedicine: A Brief History of Scientific Journals.International journal of endocrinology and metabolism · 2023Review
- A survey of biomedical journals to detect editorial bias and nepotistic behavior.PLoS biology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveAuthorship and number of publications are important criteria used for making decisions about promotions and research funding awards. Given the increase in the number of author positions over the last few decades, this study sought to determine if there had been a shift in the distribution of authorship among those publishing in high-impact academic medical journals over the last 12 years.
designThis study analysed the distribution of authorship across 312 222 original articles published in 134 medium-impact to high-impact academic medical journals between 1 January 2008 and 31 December 2019. Additionally, this study compared the trends in author distributions across nine medical specialties and a collection of cross-specialty high-impact journal articles. PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURES: The distribution of authorship was assessed using the Gini coefficient (GC), a widely used measure of economic inequality.
resultsThe overall GC for all articles sampled across the 12-year study period was 0.49, and the GCs for the first and last authorship positions were 0.30 and 0.44, respectively. Since 2008, there was a significant positive correlation between year and GC for the overall authorship position (r=0.99, p<0.001) the first author position (r=0.75, p=0.007) and the last author position (r=0.85, p<0.001) indicating increasingly uneven distribution in authorship over time. The cross-specialty high-impact journals exhibited the greatest rate of increase in GC over the study period for the first and last author position of any specialty analysed.
conclusionOverall, these data suggest a growing inequality in authorship across authors publishing in high-impact academic medical journals, especially among the highest impact journals. These findings may have implications for processes such as promotions and allocation of research funding that use authorship metrics as key criteria for making decisions.
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Registered trials
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