ArticleJAMA1994
The contributions of authors to multiauthored biomedical research papers.
Article in JAMA, 1994. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 55 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled 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.
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.
Who cites it
55 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A systematic review of research on the meaning, ethics and practices of authorship across scholarly disciplines.PloS one · 2011Pooled it
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- Knowledge and Perceptions of Honorary Authorship among Health Care Researchers: Online Cross-sectional Survey Data from the Middle East.Science and engineering ethics · 2021Article
- Survey of trends in authorship assignment in gynecologic oncology: Keeping score and playing fair.Gynecologic oncology reports · 2021Article
- Is authorship sufficient for today's collaborative research? A call for contributor roles.Accountability in research · 2021Article
- Bibliometric Analysis of the English Musculoskeletal Literature over the Last 30 Years.TheScientificWorldJournal · 2021Article
- Inferring Authors' Relative Contributions to Publications from the Order of Their Names When Default Order Is Alphabetical.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Authorship: from credit to accountability. Reflections from the Editors' Network.Clinical research in cardiology : official journal of the German Cardiac Society · 2019Review
- Authorship: from credit to accountability : Reflections from the Editors' Network.Netherlands heart journal : monthly journal of the Netherlands Society of Cardiology and the Netherlands Heart Foundation · 2019Article
- Collaborative patterns, authorship practices and scientific success in biomedical research: a network analysis.Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine · 2019Article
- Authorship Trends Over the Past 30-Years in the Annals of Biomedical Engineering.Annals of biomedical engineering · 2019Article
- Authorship: From Credit to Accountability Reflections From the Editors´ Network.Anatolian journal of cardiology · 2019Article
- Honorary Authorships in Surgical Literature.World journal of surgery · 2019Article
- Age and the Trying Out of New Ideas.Journal of human capital · 2019Article
- Resolving authorship disputes by mediation and arbitration.Research integrity and peer review · 2018Article
- Thinker, Soldier, Scribe: cross-sectional study of researchers' roles and author order in theBMJ open · 2017Observational
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- Author contributions to ecological publications: What does it mean to be an author in modern ecological research?PloS one · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo determine the contributions of each author to multiauthored biomedical research papers.
designMailed, self-administered survey.
participantsA total of 184 first authors from a consecutive sample of 200 papers with four or more authors published in 10 leading biomedical journals.
main outcome measuresFirst authors' ratings of which authors had made substantial contributions to the following: initial conception of the study, design of the study, provision of needed resources, collection of data, analysis and interpretation of data, and writing the first draft of the paper or revising drafts for important intellectual content.
resultsThe contributions of nonfirst authors varied greatly within and among papers. Even second and last authors--though they generally contributed more than other nonfirst authors--were markedly inconsistent in the extent and pattern of their contributions. Time spent on the research differed among authors by orders of magnitude. An appreciable number of authors made few or no substantial contributions to the research.
conclusionsThe nature and extent of contributions of nonfirst authors to biomedical research reported in multiauthored papers cannot reliably be discerned (or discounted) by authorship or order of authors. The two core purposes of scientific authorship--to confer credit and denote responsibility for research--are not adequately being met by these authorship practices.
Indexed as
Identifiers
8295318What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.