Multiple authorship in biomedical papers: A South African case study

The phenomenon of multiple authorship is well known in the literature of science. Specifically, the steady increase in the number of authors per publication has been noted with concern. Several studies of the authorship of biomedical papers are discussed in this paper and compared to the results of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the American Society for Information Science 1995-07, Vol.46 (6), p.468-472
Main Authors: Steynberg, Susan, Rossouw, Steve F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bibliometrics
Bibliometrics. Scientometrics. Evaluation
Co authorship
Exact sciences and technology
Information and communication sciences
Information science. Documentation
Library and information science. General aspects
Medicine
Sciences and techniques of general use
South Africa
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Summary:The phenomenon of multiple authorship is well known in the literature of science. Specifically, the steady increase in the number of authors per publication has been noted with concern. Several studies of the authorship of biomedical papers are discussed in this paper and compared to the results of an investigation of characteristics of literature produced and used by South African biomedical researchers. The source data consist of two sets—a collection of recent articles published by authors attached to South African academic and research institutions and a similar sized sample of papers cited in the first set. Apart from the quantitative characteristics of authorship, the relationship between the number of authors per paper and other attributes is discussed. Characteristics include the geopolitical source of the publication, the number of references cited per paper, and the length of articles. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
ISSN:0002-8231
1097-4571
DOI:10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(199507)46:6<468::AID-ASI6>3.0.CO;2-T