Effects of author contribution disclosures and numeric limitations on authorship trends.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To determine whether editorial policies designed to eliminate gratuitous authorship (globally referred to as authorship limitation policies), including author contribution disclosures and/or numeric restrictions, have significantly affected authorship trends during a 20-year period.

Methods

We used a custom PERL-based algorithm to extract data, including number of authors, publication date, and article subtype, from articles published from January 1, 1986, through December 31, 2006, in 16 medical journals (8 with explicit authorship guidelines restricting authorship and 8 without formal authorship policies), comprising 307,190 articles. Trends in the mean number of authors per article, sorted by journal type, article subtype, and presence of authorship limitations,

SUBMITTER: McDonald RJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2947964 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature