[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/urv/wpaper/2072-376026.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The value and credits of n-authors publications

Author

Listed:
  • Osório, António (António Miguel)
Abstract
Collaboration among researchers is becoming increasingly common, which raises a large number of scientometrics questions for which there is not a clear and generally accepted answer. For instance, what value should be given to a two-author or three- author publication with respect to a single-author publication? This paper uses axiomatic analysis and proposes a practical method to compute the expected value of an n-authors publication that takes into consideration the added value induced by collaboration in contexts in which there is no prior or ex-ante information about the publication's potential merits or scientific impact. The only information required is the number of authors. We compared the obtained theoretical values with the empirical values based on a large dataset from the Web of Science database. We found that the theoretical values are very close to the empirical values for some disciplines, but not for all. This observation provides support in favor of the method proposed in this paper. We expect that our findings can help researchers and decision- makers to choose more effective and fair counting methods that take into account the benefits of collaboration. Keywords: Co-authorship; Counting methods; Publication value; Axiomatic analysis; Bibliometrics. JEL classification: C65, D04.

Suggested Citation

  • Osório, António (António Miguel), 2019. "The value and credits of n-authors publications," Working Papers 2072/376026, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:urv:wpaper:2072/376026
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2072/376026
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bornmann, Lutz & Mutz, Rüdiger & Hug, Sven E. & Daniel, Hans-Dieter, 2011. "A multilevel meta-analysis of studies reporting correlations between the h index and 37 different h index variants," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 346-359.
    2. Marianne Gauffriau & Peder Olesen Larsen & Isabelle Maye & Anne Roulin-Perriard & Markus Ins, 2007. "Publication, cooperation and productivity measures in scientific research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 73(2), pages 175-214, November.
    3. Bouyssou, Denis & Marchant, Thierry, 2014. "An axiomatic approach to bibliometric rankings and indices," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 449-477.
    4. Bouyssou, Denis & Marchant, Thierry, 2016. "Ranking authors using fractional counting of citations: An axiomatic approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 183-199.
    5. Mu-Hsuan Huang & Chi-Shiou Lin & Dar-Zen Chen, 2011. "Counting methods, country rank changes, and counting inflation in the assessment of national research productivity and impact," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(12), pages 2427-2436, December.
    6. J. E. Hirsch, 2010. "An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output that takes into account the effect of multiple coauthorship," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 85(3), pages 741-754, December.
    7. Woeginger, Gerhard J., 2008. "An axiomatic analysis of Egghe’s g-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 364-368.
    8. Quesada, Antonio, 2009. "Monotonicity and the Hirsch index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 158-160.
    9. Miroiu, Adrian, 2013. "Axiomatizing the Hirsch index: Quantity and quality disjoined," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 10-15.
    10. Kongo, Takumi, 2014. "An alternative axiomatization of the Hirsch index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 252-258.
    11. Xuan Zhen Liu & Hui Fang, 2012. "Fairly sharing the credit of multi-authored papers and its application in the modification of h-index and g-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 91(1), pages 37-49, April.
    12. Bornmann, Lutz & Marx, Werner, 2015. "Methods for the generation of normalized citation impact scores in bibliometrics: Which method best reflects the judgements of experts?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 408-418.
    13. Xiaojun Hu, 2009. "Loads of special authorship functions: Linear growth in the percentage of “equal first authors” and corresponding authors," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 60(11), pages 2378-2381, November.
    14. Jinseok Kim & Jana Diesner, 2014. "A network-based approach to coauthorship credit allocation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(1), pages 587-602, October.
    15. Ali Gazni & Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Fereshteh Didegah, 2012. "Mapping world scientific collaboration: Authors, institutions, and countries," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(2), pages 323-335, February.
    16. Ali Gazni & Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Fereshteh Didegah, 2012. "Mapping world scientific collaboration: Authors, institutions, and countries," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(2), pages 323-335, February.
    17. Quesada, Antonio, 2011. "Axiomatics for the Hirsch index and the Egghe index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 476-480.
    18. Mu‐Hsuan Huang & Chi‐Shiou Lin & Dar‐Zen Chen, 2011. "Counting methods, country rank changes, and counting inflation in the assessment of national research productivity and impact," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 62(12), pages 2427-2436, December.
    19. Jiann-wien Hsu & Ding-wei Huang, 2011. "Correlation between impact and collaboration," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 86(2), pages 317-324, February.
    20. Woeginger, Gerhard J., 2008. "An axiomatic characterization of the Hirsch-index," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 224-232, September.
    21. Antonio Quesada, 2011. "Further characterizations of the Hirsch index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 87(1), pages 107-114, April.
    22. Jian Xu & Ying Ding & Min Song & Tamy Chambers, 2016. "Author credit-assignment schemas: A comparison and analysis," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 67(8), pages 1973-1989, August.
    23. Motty Perry & Philip J. Reny, 2016. "How to Count Citations If You Must," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(9), pages 2722-2741, September.
    24. N. Assimakis & M. Adam, 2010. "A new author’s productivity index: p-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 85(2), pages 415-427, November.
    25. Martin, Ben R. & Irvine, John, 1993. "Assessing basic research : Some partial indicators of scientific progress in radio astronomy," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 106-106, April.
    26. Bouyssou, D. & Marchant, T., 2010. "Consistent bibliometric rankings of authors and of journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 365-378.
    27. Bouyssou, Denis & Marchant, Thierry, 2011. "Bibliometric rankings of journals based on Impact Factors: An axiomatic approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 75-86.
    28. Natsuo Onodera & Fuyuki Yoshikane, 2015. "Factors affecting citation rates of research articles," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(4), pages 739-764, April.
    29. Frandsen, Tove Faber & Nicolaisen, Jeppe, 2010. "What is in a name? Credit assignment practices in different disciplines," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 608-617.
    30. Frank J. Trueba & Héctor Guerrero, 2004. "A robust formula to credit authors for their publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 60(2), pages 181-204, June.
    31. Vladimir G. Deineko & Gerhard J. Woeginger, 2009. "A new family of scientific impact measures: The generalized Kosmulski-indices," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 80(3), pages 819-826, September.
    32. Vincent Larivière & Yves Gingras & Cassidy R. Sugimoto & Andrew Tsou, 2015. "Team size matters: Collaboration and scientific impact since 1900," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 66(7), pages 1323-1332, July.
    33. António Osório, 2018. "On the impossibility of a perfect counting method to allocate the credits of multi-authored publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 2161-2173, September.
    34. Bouyssou, D. & Marchant, T., 2010. "Consistent bibliometric rankings of authors and of journals," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 365-378.
    35. Kim, Jinseok & Kim, Jinmo, 2015. "Rethinking the comparison of coauthorship credit allocation schemes," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 667-673.
    36. Lydia L. Lange, 2001. "Citation Counts of Multi-Authored Papers — First-named Authors and Further Authors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 52(3), pages 457-470, November.
    37. Waltman, Ludo, 2012. "An empirical analysis of the use of alphabetical authorship in scientific publishing," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 700-711.
    38. Abramo, Giovanni & D’Angelo, Ciriaco Andrea & Rosati, Francesco, 2013. "The importance of accounting for the number of co-authors and their order when assessing research performance at the individual level in the life sciences," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 198-208.
    39. Teja Tscharntke & Michael E Hochberg & Tatyana A Rand & Vincent H Resh & Jochen Krauss, 2007. "Author Sequence and Credit for Contributions in Multiauthored Publications," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(1), pages 1-2, January.
    40. Blaise Cronin, 2001. "Hyperauthorship: A postmodern perversion or evidence of a structural shift in scholarly communication practices?," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 52(7), pages 558-569.
    41. Antonio Quesada, 2010. "More axiomatics for the Hirsch index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 82(2), pages 413-418, February.
    42. Katz, J. Sylvan & Martin, Ben R., 1997. "What is research collaboration?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 1-18, March.
    43. G. Van Hooydonk, 1997. "Fractional counting of multiauthored publications: Consequences for the impact of authors," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 48(10), pages 944-945, October.
    44. Olle Persson & Wolfgang Glänzel & Rickard Danell, 2004. "Inflationary bibliometric values: The role of scientific collaboration and the need for relative indicators in evaluative studies," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 60(3), pages 421-432, August.
    45. I. Lukovits & P. Vinkler, 1995. "Correct credit distribution: A model for sharing credit among coauthors," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 36(1), pages 91-98, September.
    46. Thierry Marchant, 2009. "An axiomatic characterization of the ranking based on the h-index and some other bibliometric rankings of authors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 80(2), pages 325-342, August.
    47. Woeginger, Gerhard J., 2008. "A symmetry axiom for scientific impact indices," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 298-303.
    48. Leo Egghe & Ronald Rousseau & Guido Van Hooydonk, 2000. "Methods for accrediting publications to authors or countries: Consequences for evaluation studies," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 51(2), pages 145-157.
    49. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    2. António Osório, 2018. "On the impossibility of a perfect counting method to allocate the credits of multi-authored publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 2161-2173, September.
    3. Pär Sundling, 2023. "Author contributions and allocation of authorship credit: testing the validity of different counting methods in the field of chemical biology," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(5), pages 2737-2762, May.
    4. Bouyssou, Denis & Marchant, Thierry, 2016. "Ranking authors using fractional counting of citations: An axiomatic approach," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 183-199.
    5. Bouyssou, Denis & Marchant, Thierry, 2014. "An axiomatic approach to bibliometric rankings and indices," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 449-477.
    6. Liu, Xuan Zhen & Fang, Hui, 2023. "A geometric counting method adaptive to the author number," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2).
    7. Rahman, Mohammad Tariqur & Regenstein, Joe Mac & Kassim, Noor Lide Abu & Haque, Nazmul, 2017. "The need to quantify authors’ relative intellectual contributions in a multi-author paper," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 275-281.
    8. Ana Paula dos Santos Rubem & Ariane Lima Moura & João Carlos Correia Baptista Soares de Mello, 2015. "Comparative analysis of some individual bibliometric indices when applied to groups of researchers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 102(1), pages 1019-1035, January.
    9. Csató, László, 2019. "Journal ranking should depend on the level of aggregation," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(4).
    10. L'aszl'o Csat'o, 2019. "Journal ranking should depend on the level of aggregation," Papers 1904.06300, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2019.
    11. Brandão, Luana Carneiro & Soares de Mello, João Carlos Correia Baptista, 2019. "A multi-criteria approach to the h-index," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 276(1), pages 357-363.
    12. Woeginger, Gerhard J., 2014. "Investigations on the step-based research indices of Chambers and Miller," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 659-666.
    13. Kim, Jinseok & Kim, Jinmo, 2015. "Rethinking the comparison of coauthorship credit allocation schemes," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 667-673.
    14. Sylvain Béal & Eric Rémila & Philippe Solal & Sylvain Ferrières, 2016. "An axiomatization of the iterated h-index and applications to sport rankings," Working Papers hal-01394818, HAL.
    15. Mark Levene & Trevor Fenner & Judit Bar-Ilan, 2019. "Characterisation of the $$\chi$$χ-index and the rec-index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(2), pages 885-896, August.
    16. Xie, Qing & Zhang, Xinyuan & Song, Min, 2021. "A network embedding-based scholar assessment indicator considering four facets: Research topic, author credit allocation, field-normalized journal impact, and published time," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4).
    17. Chambers, Christopher P. & Miller, Alan D., 2014. "Scholarly influence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 571-583.
    18. Jinseok Kim & Jana Diesner, 2014. "A network-based approach to coauthorship credit allocation," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(1), pages 587-602, October.
    19. Sandro Tarkhan-Mouravi, 2020. "Traditional indicators inflate some countries’ scientific impact over 10 times," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(1), pages 337-356, April.
    20. Adachi, Tsuyoshi & Kongo, Takumi, 2015. "Further axiomatizations of Egghe's g-index," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 839-844.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bibliometria; 00 - Ciència i coneixement. Investigació. Cultura. Humanitats; 02 - Biblioteconomia. Documentació;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C65 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Miscellaneous Mathematical Tools
    • D04 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Policy: Formulation; Implementation; Evaluation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:urv:wpaper:2072/376026. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ariadna Casals (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deurves.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.