Contribution based author categorization to calculate author performance index
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-1-2021
Abstract
Despite the widely used author contribution criteria, unethical authorship practices such as guest, ghost, and honorary authorship remain largely unsolved. We have identified six major reasons by analyzing 78 published papers addressing unethical authorship practice. Those are lack of: (i) awareness about and (ii) compliance with authorship criteria, (iii) universal definition and scope for determining authorship, (iv) common mechanisms for positioning an author in the list, (v) quantitative measures of intellectual contribution; and (vi) pressure to publish. As a measure to control unethical practice, we have evaluated the possibility to adopt an author categorization scheme - proposed according to the common understanding of how first-, co-, principal-, or corresponding- author is perceived. Based on an online opinion survey, the scheme was supported by similar to 80% of the respondents (n=370). The impact of the proposed categorization was then evaluated using a novel mathematical tool to measure ``Author Performance Index (API)'' that can be higher for those who might have authored more papers as primary and/or principal authors than those as coauthors. Hence, if adopted, the proposed author categorization scheme together with the API would provide a better way to evaluate the credit of an individual as a primary and principal author.
Keywords
Authorship criteria, Corresponding author, Hyperauthorship, Primary author, Principal author, Relative intellectual contribution
Divisions
Dentistry
Publication Title
Accountability in Research - Policies and Quality Assurance
Volume
28
Issue
8
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Publisher Location
530 WALNUT STREET, STE 850, PHILADELPHIA, PA 19106 USA