First and Others credit-assignment schema for evaluating the academic contribution of coauthors (original) (raw)
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The value and credits of n-authors publications
Journal of Informetrics, 2019
Collaboration among researchers is becoming increasingly common, which raises a large number of scientometrics questions for which there is not a clear and generally accepted answer. For instance, what value should be given to a two-author or threeauthor publication with respect to a single-author publication? This paper uses axiomatic analysis and proposes a practical method to compute the expected value of an n-authors publication that takes into consideration the added value induced by collaboration in contexts in which there is no prior or ex-ante information about the publication's potential merits or scientific impact. The only information required is the number of authors. We compared the obtained theoretical values with the empirical values based on a large dataset from the Web of Science database. We found that the theoretical values are very close to the empirical values for some disciplines, but not for all. This observation provides support in favor of the method proposed in this paper. We expect that our findings can help researchers and decisionmakers to choose more effective and fair counting methods that take into account the benefits of collaboration.
The need to quantify authors’ relative intellectual contributions in a multi-author paper
Measuring the contribution of each author of a multi-author paper has been a long standing concern. As a possible solution to this, we propose a list of intellectual activities and logistic support activities that might be involved in the production of a research paper. We then develop a quantitative approach to estimate an author’s relative intellectual contribution to a published work. An author’s relative intellectual contribution is calculated as the percent contribution of an author to each intellectual activity involved in the production of the paper multiplied by a weighing factor for each intellectual activity. The relative intellectual contribution calculated in this way can be used to determine the position of an author in the author list of a paper. Second, a corrected citation index for each author, called the T-index, can be calculated by multiplying the relative intellectual contribution by the total citations received by a paper. The proposed approach can be used to measure the impact of an author of a multi-authored paper in a more accurate way than either giving each author full credit or dividing credit equally. Our proposal not only resolves the long standing concern for the fair distribution of each author’s credit depending on his/her contribution, but it will also, hopefully, discourage addition of non-contributing authors to a paper.
A robust formula to credit authors for their publications
Scientometrics, 2004
We have developed a formula that assigns relative values to each author of the list of authors in any publication according to the authors' relative positions. The formula satisfies several criteria of theoretical and practical significance. We tested the formula's validity and usefulness with bibliographical references from the INSPEC database, mainly from the physical sciences. Enforced alphabetical sorting, different names of single authors and other statistical disturbances are accounted for. Our results demonstrate that our formula, or any other that satisfies several objective and quantitative criteria, can and often should be used as an additional criterion in the processes of evaluating relative scientific productivity, detecting experts in a given discipline, etc.
Assessing the true role of coauthors in the -index measure of an author scientific impact
Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications
A method based on the classical principal component analysis leads to demonstrate that the role of co-authors should give a h-index measure to a group leader higher than usually accepted. The method rather easily gives what is usually searched for, i.e. an estimate of the role (or "weight") of co-authors, as the additional value to an author papers' popularity. The construction of the co-authorship popularity H-matrix is exemplified and the role of eigenvalues and the main eigenvector component are discussed. An example illustrates the points and serves as the basis for suggesting a generally practical application of the concept.
Publ., 2021
A novel scientometric index, named ‘author-suggested, weighted citation index’ (Aw-index) is proposed to indicate the scientific contribution of any individual researcher. For calculation of the Aw-index, it is suggested that during the submission of a scholarly article, the corresponding author would provide a statement, agreed upon by all the authors, containing weightage factors against each author of the article. The author who contributed more to the article would secure a higher weightage factor. The summation of the weightage factors of all the authors of an article should be unity. The citation points a researcher receives from a scholarly publication is the product of his/her weightage factor for that article and the total number of citations of the article. The Aw-index of any individual researcher is the summation of the citation points he/she receives for all his/her publications as an author. The Aw-index provides the opportunity to the group of authors of a multi-autho...
Impact of the number and rank of coauthors on h-index and π-index. The part-impact method
Scientometrics
The publication activity of 20 Price-medallists was analysed by calculating several scientometric indices from data of elite sets of their publications. The following elite sets (i.e. most cited papers within the total) were obtained: π-set (where the number of papers is equal to √P, and P is the number of total papers), h-set (in which the number of papers equals to the Hirsch index), 2π-set, 2h-set, and the set of papers (ECP) which are cited more frequently than the average. The percentage share of papers and citations was found to increase in the mentioned rank of the elite sets, except ECP-set. The number of publications and citations in the elite sets was calculated also by different part-impact methods for sharing credit among the coauthors. The applied methods take into account the number or number and rank of coauthors in the by-line of the papers. It was demostrated that any of the methods changes both π and h-index significantly related to the value calculated by attribut...
A scientometrics law about co-authors and their ranking. The co-author core
2012
Rather than "measuring" a scientist impact through the number of citations which his/her published work can have generated, isn't it more appropriate to consider his/her value through his/her scientific network performance illustrated by his/her co-author role, thus focussing on his/her joint publications, -and their impact through citations? Whence, on one hand, this paper very briefly examines bibliometric laws, like the h-index and subsequent debate about co-authorship effects, but on the other hand, proposes a measure of collaborative work through a new index. Based on data about the publication output of a specific research group, a new bibliometric law is found. Let a co-author C have written J (joint) publications with one or several colleagues. Rank all the co-authors of that individual according to their number of joint publications, giving a rank r to each co-author, starting with r = 1 for the most prolific. It is empirically found that a very simple relationship holds between the number of joint publications J by coauthors and their rank of importance, i.e. J ∝ 1/r. Thereafter, in the same spirit as for the Hirsch core, one can define a "co-author core", and introduce indices operating on an author. It is emphasized that the new index has a quite different (philosophical) perspective that the h-index. In the present case, one focusses on "relevant" persons rather than on "relevant" publications. Although the numerical discussion is based on one case, there is little doubt that the law can be verified in many other situations. Therefore, variants and generalizations could be later produced in order to quantify co-author roles, in a temporary or long lasting stable team(s), and lead to criteria about funding, career measurements or even induce career strategies.
Bibliometric author evaluation through linear regression on the coauthor network
Journal of Informetrics
The rising trend of coauthored academic works obscures the credit assignment that is the basis for decisions of funding and career advancements. In this paper, a simple model based on the assumption of an unvarying "author ability" is introduced. With this assumption, the weight of author contributions to a body of coauthored work can be statistically estimated. The method is tested on a set of some more than five-hundred authors in a coauthor network from the CiteSeerX database. The ranking obtained agrees fairly well with that given by total fractional citation counts for an author, but noticeable differences exist.
Citation Indexes Accounting for Authorship Order in Coauthored Research—Review and New Proposal
Science & Technology Libraries, 2016
Research articles' authorship confers credit and has important academic, social, and financial implications. After a paper is published, credit is harvested via citations. Currently, authorship order is not taken into account by the bibliometric citation indexes used in citation databases. It means that one gets the same measure of credit for a single-or first-authored article as for a multiauthored publication in which one is a middle author among other coauthors. This reality may not be appropriate, and it does matter since (1) it influences scientific performance assessment, which is extremely important at the time of recruitment or allocation of grants; and (2) it may affect scientific legacy. This work aims at recalling for the scientific community the need of change of the actual assessment paradigm by providing a review of the main bibliometric index and authorship credit models proposed in the literature as well as an original scientific performance evaluation method suggested by the authors.