It seems to be common in some fields to have papers with multiple co-first authors. How is this viewed in the general academic community? Do you think this is a just system to ensure that everyone gets due credit for a project or just a way to grab credit and just prevent authorship disputes within groups?
Full disclosure: I shared co-first authorship with two other authors on one of my papers (there were five authors total) and the listed order of the three first authors was literally determined by drawing from a deck of cards.
Generally, the author who conduct the experiments and wrote the manuscript should be 1st author.
When 2 authors contributed in experimental and writing equally, so to save their rights we may highlight that both of them has equally contributed.
Article In situ growth of redox-active iron-centered nanoparticles o...
I have learned something new and searched out some papers with multiple first co-authors. It seems to me to be a nice way, everyone will be happy.
I have seen papers with more than 80+ authors whose names are alphabetically arranged. Probably that is another way of giving equal credit to all
Dear Albert E. Patterson
for the sake of science evaluation transparency each author should declare percentage contribution to a given article. Then the citation count and the other scientometric metrics should be calculated as weighted ones. Then the order of author names doesn't matter and can be alphabetical.
I think it is mainly because they want to prevent authorship disputes. However, there surely are more and less contributions from the authors in the publication.
Someone sent me this paper in a private message which has 5154 authors from 167 different institutions in one of the top physics journals.
Article Combined Measurement of the Higgs Boson Mass in $pp$ Collisi...
The paper is 33 pages long because of the author list. I guess it makes sense on the context of the massive dataset presented but still this seems crazy. I'd hate to be the editor for this paper.
Dear Vishnu,
I will send you the PDF of the paper on Monday.
Thank you.
I was also aware of the physics paper with 5000+ authors.
I came to know about it through RG.
Dear Vishnu,
See the attached publication with 97 authors you wished to see.
I know some of them personally and with full confidence can tell you that everyone has contributed something.
With best wishes,
Subir.
Generally, the author who conduct the experiments and wrote the manuscript should be 1st author.
When 2 authors contributed in experimental and writing equally, so to save their rights we may highlight that both of them has equally contributed.
Article In situ growth of redox-active iron-centered nanoparticles o...
Thank you everyone for your answers and opinions on this question. I am particularly interested by the suggestion to have a "percentage" contribution by each of the authors. I am going to start another discussion on this topic.
Albert E. Patterson
this topic is really hot. Some platforms already support bibliometric analysis this way too.
In many disciplines in the social sciences and business, including economics and finance, the order of authorship is alphabetical.
Many publishers require a clear statement at the end of the paper regarding the contributions of each author to the published paper.
Dear what matters is the real contribution of the authors and should follow the order of the level of contribution by each author
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