Hello,
How many authors names can be used in an academic article? Does the chronology of authors name carry any value?
Thanks
I am not aware of a limit per se, though some journals may set a limit;,dozens of authors are are listed for many article. First author is the lead author and generally considered the major contributor.
The first author is the most valued position of course.
But there is the possibility to share this credit between two authors if their contribution was about the same. In this case there has to be remark in the article: “these two authors contributed equally”. This means they share the credit of a first authorship although one of them is listed (usually) in the second position.
Of almost equal value as a first authorship is the “corresponding authorship”. That is the author who is listed on the article as the contact person. If somebody wants to know more about the publication they can contact the corresponding author to get additional information. Usually the corresponding author designed and supervised the study, often it was based on his idea.
There is also the so called “senior author” which is listed last. He is often the head of the institution where the research was performed and was responsible for funding. In many cases the senior and corresponding author is the same person.
In general co-authors that are listed closer to the front have contributed more and those closer to the end have contributed less or are more senior personnel that were not so much involved in technical work but organization and supervision.
The number of authors is unlimited in principal. There are publications with dozens if not hundreds of authors in large international multi-institutional projects. But in the last past years more and more journals have limited the number of co-authors. Typically the limitation is six authors. The lowest limit I have come across was four. In my opinion this is a very dangerous tendency that might do serious damage to future research. Nowadays studies are often very complex and require the contributions of specialists from many fields to be meaningful. In the times of “publish or perish”, if there is no room for them as a co-author they will not be able to participate.
There may be differences about what I wrote in different fields of research with different cultures and traditions. What I related is typical for biomedical research, especially oral biology and biomaterial research.
There is technically no limit, but the typical range of author numbers tends to vary among disciplines (many more co-authors in sciences, usually only one or two authors in most humanities, somewhere in-between for social sciences). In most cases, first author is lead author, but sometimes authorship is alphabetical, and, in some disciplines the last author is lead author, lab director, or project director for a large collaborative project. Except when it's alphabetical, it's expected that the first author had a major (or the major) hand in writing the article, but some articles are truly collaborative so that authorship is genuinely shared (thus the alphabetization in some cases). The corresponding author is usually also the lead author, but not always.
The chronology of authors name depends on the contribution of each author in the paper
Best Regards Md. Saidur Rahaman
Stefan Tangl Your information is highly rich and all-encompassing. Thumb up.
This is just my personal thought, but if I see 10 or more authors listed I wonder if many of those listed are work group members. How many people could it take to draft a manuscript?
Here is some information on authorship (and non-authors): http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html#two
Contrary to what scholars do in the US, I have noticed in articles published in Mexico, the lead investigator/ main contributor is generally listed LAST.
Can confirm, I've seen leads listed first and last. I thought it was an institutional preference but by country make sense too.
The chronology of authors name depends on the contribution of each author in the paper
The sequence of authorship also depends upon the credit being given by the concerned authorities in a particular country. Pakistan Medical & Dental Council (PM&DC) used to give full credit only to the first three authors, but last year they enhanced the number to six, with concomitant increase in the number of publications required for academic promotions. Some institutions give full credit to the first author only; half credit to the second author, one-fourth to the third and so forth. In this way the sequence of authors becomes immensely important. So the authors need to know the local rules and regulations regarding authorship.
First author and corresponding author will get equal or full credit separately, but the order of other authors does not affect, they will get same credit.
Ex. 1. For two authored article first author and corresponding author will get full credit separately.
2. for four authored article first author and corresponding will get full credit or 50 % credit separately, based on where you are going to apply. If say impact factor is 4.0, first author and corresponding author will get 2.0 points each, second and third author will get 1.0 point each.
Credits depend upon the local regulating authority. Following are few examples;
1. Full credit to first thee authors, half credit to subsequent ones.
2. Full credit to first six authors. No credit to subsequent authors.
3. Full credit to the first author, half to the 2nd, one third to the 3rd, one fourth to the 4th author ans do on.
There is no limit to the number of authors, the following paper has thousands of authors.
Article Combined Measurement of the Higgs Boson Mass in $pp$ Collisi...
Totally agreed with Mr. Apicare Journal. In addition, having papers with 6+ authors is uncommon but not unheard-of. Most often I see papers coming out of larger international research projects having many authors, presumably simply because in a large project more hands tend to touch any given piece of research outcome. Further, in larger studies, you sometimes need more manpower to actually carry out the study. If you have a chance to do an interview study with a large group of people, just having one or two interviewers might simply be infeasible because it would take too long. If you are worried that your large author list will be considered a negative during the review process, this may happen if it is not clear how the large author list is warranted. That is, if you were to publish work coming less directly out of the Ph.D. thesis of the first author with 7 co-authors, one may ask what the remaining 7 people actually added.
When there are more than two, especially many more, in some fields the lab or project leader is last author, the person who had primary or secondary responsibility for the article is first author, and the rest are alphabetical or very roughly in order of their contributions. Where there are very many "authors," I'd imagine that many of them contributed to the project in ways that did not explicitly involve writing any of the article's text. Also, some doctoral supervisors put themselves last and put one of their senior graduate students as first author in order to help their careers.
In some places, it is customary that senior researchers, chiefs of departments as well as doctoral supervisors put themselves last in the sequence of authors.
The convention in economics, albeit not universal, is for authors to be listed alphabetically. That is partly why we are very strict about including researchers as authors: you have to have made a substantive contribution to the study and paper.
Authorship of Research Papers
https://www.slideshare.net/gauravhtandon1/authorship-of-research-papers
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