What is the ideal allocation of a citation to each of the authors of a paper or monograph that is cited? Two guiding principles are offered: First, the order in which authors are listed reflects their respective contributions. The first author contributes more than the second who contributes more than the third etc. Second, the sum of credit for a single citation among each of the authors should add up to one. If each author gets full credit for the citation, this could provide incentive for some researchers to add their names to each others' research and thereby raise their respective citation counts. My proposal is that the share of a citation each author receives is twice that of the next author and the sum of credit shares of all authors totals to 1. So if number of authors (n) = 1, 1st (and only) author gets full credit. If n = 2, 1st author gets .67 credit and 2nd author gets .33 credit. Finally if n = 3, 1st author receives .57 credit, 2nd gets .29 credit and third receives .14 credit.

It may be that this proposal works well for some disciplines but not in authors. For example, there could a difference between fields in the humanities where the number of authors on a typical research work is smaller than in engineering and the natural sciences where results from laboratory research are often the fruit of half a dozen or more scientists.