Page 129 - Becoming Metric Wise

120 Becoming Metric-Wise

and Garfield (1982) found that eminent scientists received nearly twice as
many citations as secondary authors in the sense of not being the first
author than as primary ones. This shows that eminent scientists have been
systematically ceding first authorship to their junior collaborators. This
practice was termed noblesse oblige by Harriet Zuckerman. Nowadays there
is probably little noblesse included as very often the hard work and some-
times the main idea comes from the first author, while the last one (the
eminent scientist) plays a more supervising role. Anyway, we are convinced,
with Lindsey (1980), that there is neither strong empirical evidence nor
theoretical rationale to support using straight counts.
Giving each author a full credit favors authors who often collaborate.
For this reason this method is sometimes referred to as inflated counts.
Especially in cases of mega- or hyperauthorship, say 50 authors or more it
does not seem right that each author receives a full credit.
Major contribution count seems more correct, but still some contri-
butors receive no credit. The habit of giving first and corresponding
authors a special treatment has led to the strange (i.e., mathematically
illogical) phenomenon of several first authors and/or several correspond-
ing authors. Hu (2009) showed that in the Journal of Biological Chemistry
this phenomenon occurred in about 8% of the articles in 1999 and
increased to about 26% in 2008.
Adjusting credits to all authors seems the best method. If no informa-
tion is given one should use complete-normalized counting, while when
it is known that authors are listed in order of importance harmonic
counting, (possibly adapted for the role of the last author) seems the best
solution. Of course, also here mega-authorship leads to a practical
problem.
Note that all methods except complete count and major contribution
count, assign a unit credit to one article. Complete counts assign a credit
of n (if there are n authors) to one article and major contribution count
gives as many credits as there are major contributors. Of course, it is also
imaginable that each major contributor receives a fraction of a credit in
such a way that also for this method one article leads to a total of one
credit.
It is easy to understand that different counting methods may lead to
different rankings among authors (rankings according to the number of
articles to which they contributed). We provide an illustration.
Determine from Table 5.2 the credits received by each author sepa-
rately (authors A, B, C, D, E, F) and their publication rank by using first