In every research paper, first author contribution is comparatively high. To tribute their work is there any index number for an author acting as first author in different papers?
Dear Stephen Leon Joseph Leon I think it's impossible to differentiate between the various authors of a multi-author paper in terms of h-index etc. How could a database like Scopus know which author contributed more or less to a published research paper? It also depends very much on the disciplines of research. In our discipline, chemistry, it is true that the first author (normally a PhD student or a post-doctoral fellow) did the most important part of the work. However, in other disciplines like mathematics the authors are listed in alphabetical order. Thus all disciplines have their own habits and traditions, so that it makes absolutely no sense to define an own index number for the first author of a research paper. Besides, don't we have already too many different index numbers??
Not in every paper the first author has contributed more than the others. Very often the authors are indicated in alphabetic order (especially when there are many authors) because it would be not possible to estimate the amount of their contributions. As far as I know, bibliometric analysis always treats all authors of a publication with the same weight.
Is this f-index really in use or was it just a proposal? See https://www.researchgate.net/post/What-would-be-the-merits-and-added-usefulness-of-a-first-author-citation-index-f-index . - Generally I doubt that scientific productivity, impact etc. can be measured by a single value, provided that it can be measured at all.
In addition to Wolfgang's statement: I believe, there is a different between the first and the corresponding author. If there is such a metric, it should measure the corresponding author.
To my experience, in some evaluation processes if you have lot of first author papers, it is appreciated as sign of person input on research area progress.
Dear Stephen Leon Joseph Leon I think it's impossible to differentiate between the various authors of a multi-author paper in terms of h-index etc. How could a database like Scopus know which author contributed more or less to a published research paper? It also depends very much on the disciplines of research. In our discipline, chemistry, it is true that the first author (normally a PhD student or a post-doctoral fellow) did the most important part of the work. However, in other disciplines like mathematics the authors are listed in alphabetical order. Thus all disciplines have their own habits and traditions, so that it makes absolutely no sense to define an own index number for the first author of a research paper. Besides, don't we have already too many different index numbers??
Dear Frank T. Edelmann I think during manuscript submission irrespective of discipline, every journal asks 1st, 2nd ... author during submission. Every journal can maintain a record using this. The point of insisting this here is nowadays some researchers are forming group and started adding their names among themselves (Just for paper count without contributing anything in that paper). Its a growing trend now.
Dear Stephen,
even if some journals ask 1st, 2nd etc. author, the journal does not ask any percentages or contributing roles of the authors => it's impossible to calculate any meaningful author position related index.
There is small exception to this rule, it is the journals who demand an extra list of all authors and all different contributing roles those authors have been in the particular paper (contributorship statement). With classifications like in the attachment in my post.
But to my experience, it is not too typical to see these statements publicly available, with the papers :-(
B.R.,
Assoc. Prof. Ari H.
hi
I think there is no separate index for first author in any journal ....but if we talk about h-index...it directly goes to first author who has published the research article ....as this h-index measures both quality and quantity of our publication by no of citations...thats why we say my h-index is 7..or 8..or 9
...it directly goes to first author....
Dear Stephen Leon Joseph Leon "nowadays some researchers are forming group and started adding their names among themselves (Just for paper count without contributing anything in that paper)": Fortunately this never happened in our research group. For each of our 400+ research paper I can tell you exactly what the contribution of every co-author was. In our discipline, synthetic chemistry, we heavily rely on team work. Thus every co-author is responsible for a clearly defined task (synthesis, analysis, spectroscopy, crystal structure etc.). We never added any author name without a significant contribution to the published work.
It just doesn't make sense. Indeed, sometimes the first author can be a student, who has made almost all lab work, but the conceptualization, and even writing were done by the professor (usually, the corresponding author, but not always). In general, the corresponding author is "more important", but actually, it can mean something different. Moreover, critically thinking, we cannot avoid the final conclusion: it is just fundamentally impossible to describe the "quality" of a scientist with a single number. It would be a function: f(x1, x2, x3, x4,...) = N, where N is a single number (h-, f-, etc index) and x1, x2, x3... - professional skills of the person. Obviously, it is just a wasting of time.
If there is no agreement between the authors about the location at the beginning of the article in alphabetical order, then the first one is put the author who is more trusted by the scientific community
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