Two equally 'successful' studies are published - one by two authors and another by eight authors. Presently, the metrics allow for the eight authors each to get an equal 'unit of recognition' but the two authors only receive two total 'units of recognition'. Others have proposed weighting the impact of a scientific contribution by the number of authors. What do you say?
In general, the likelihood of a scientific paper being easily accepted ("being successful") increases with the number of authors, because it is written from many more different viewpoints. However after about seven authors, the number of viewpoints is no longer statistically independent (in-breeding or saturation sets in), or to look at it differently, the incremental addition of an author to the author line becomes a progressively smaller contribution. This means that the last mentioned (non-leader; non-alphabetically ordered) author 'unfairly' now gets more due than deserved. In practice it is difficult to proportion contributions. Somewhat easier is to say who contributed more than who and order the author line correspondingly.
In the general absence of any statement of authorship proportions, I would suggest that a mechanistic weighted scheme could be based on a Zip's law (1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, 1/7, 1/8th) that is normalised. You saw it here first!
In general, the likelihood of a scientific paper being easily accepted ("being successful") increases with the number of authors, because it is written from many more different viewpoints. However after about seven authors, the number of viewpoints is no longer statistically independent (in-breeding or saturation sets in), or to look at it differently, the incremental addition of an author to the author line becomes a progressively smaller contribution. This means that the last mentioned (non-leader; non-alphabetically ordered) author 'unfairly' now gets more due than deserved. In practice it is difficult to proportion contributions. Somewhat easier is to say who contributed more than who and order the author line correspondingly.
In the general absence of any statement of authorship proportions, I would suggest that a mechanistic weighted scheme could be based on a Zip's law (1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, 1/7, 1/8th) that is normalised. You saw it here first!
@ Dr. Devang Pandya
DIfficult to say such an approach is fair. Who is to decide who among, say, 8 authors is a supervisor or a mentor? It also assumes that a corresponding author importantly contributed to the paper - is it always the case? (It's not, of course!)
I think we could point out here other examples of situations when such an approach of dividing the points is not fully fair, but it's not the point. The point is, it's impossible to come up with any sensible "algorithm" for division of "recognition" among coauthors that would be fair and general. If we know who did what, it's easy; otherwise, we have to choose some artificial way of "allocating recognition" - it will be OK in some situations and totally unfair in many others.
I had not heard that OA Journals were charging per unit author. I think that is an interesting arrangement, and will look forward to seeing its effects.
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