{"title":"Authorship and citation patterns of highly cited biomedical researchers: a cross-sectional study.","authors":"Thomas Perneger","doi":"10.1186/s41073-023-00137-1","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Background: </strong>Scientific productivity is often evaluated by means of cumulative citation metrics. Different metrics produce different incentives. The H-index assigns full credit from a citation to each coauthor, and thus may encourage multiple collaborations in mid-list author roles. In contrast, the Hm-index assigns only a fraction 1/k of citation credit to each of k coauthors of an article, and thus may encourage research done by smaller teams, and in first or last author roles. Whether H and Hm indices are influenced by different authorship patterns has not been examined.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong>Using a publicly available Scopus database, I examined associations between the numbers of research articles published as single, first, mid-list, or last author between 1990 and 2019, and the H-index and the Hm-index, among 18,231 leading researchers in the health sciences.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Adjusting for career duration and other article types, the H-index was negatively associated with the number of single author articles (partial Pearson r -0.06) and first author articles (-0.08), but positively associated with the number of mid-list (0.64) and last author articles (0.21). In contrast, all associations were positive for the Hm-index (0.04 for single author articles, 0.18 for first author articles, 0.24 for mid-list articles, and 0.46 for last author articles).</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>The H-index and the Hm-index do not reflect the same authorship patterns: the full-credit H-index is predominantly associated with mid-list authorship, whereas the partial-credit Hm-index is driven by more balanced publication patterns, and is most strongly associated with last-author articles. Since performance metrics may act as incentives, the selection of a citation metric should receive careful consideration.</p>","PeriodicalId":74682,"journal":{"name":"Research integrity and peer review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10478343/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Research integrity and peer review","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-023-00137-1","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ETHICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: Scientific productivity is often evaluated by means of cumulative citation metrics. Different metrics produce different incentives. The H-index assigns full credit from a citation to each coauthor, and thus may encourage multiple collaborations in mid-list author roles. In contrast, the Hm-index assigns only a fraction 1/k of citation credit to each of k coauthors of an article, and thus may encourage research done by smaller teams, and in first or last author roles. Whether H and Hm indices are influenced by different authorship patterns has not been examined.
Methods: Using a publicly available Scopus database, I examined associations between the numbers of research articles published as single, first, mid-list, or last author between 1990 and 2019, and the H-index and the Hm-index, among 18,231 leading researchers in the health sciences.
Results: Adjusting for career duration and other article types, the H-index was negatively associated with the number of single author articles (partial Pearson r -0.06) and first author articles (-0.08), but positively associated with the number of mid-list (0.64) and last author articles (0.21). In contrast, all associations were positive for the Hm-index (0.04 for single author articles, 0.18 for first author articles, 0.24 for mid-list articles, and 0.46 for last author articles).
Conclusion: The H-index and the Hm-index do not reflect the same authorship patterns: the full-credit H-index is predominantly associated with mid-list authorship, whereas the partial-credit Hm-index is driven by more balanced publication patterns, and is most strongly associated with last-author articles. Since performance metrics may act as incentives, the selection of a citation metric should receive careful consideration.
背景:科学生产力通常通过累积引用指标来评估。不同的指标产生不同的激励。h指数将引文的全部荣誉分配给每个共同作者,因此可能会鼓励以中等作者角色进行多次合作。相比之下,hm指数只给一篇文章的k个共同作者分配了1/k的引用信用,因此可能会鼓励较小的团队进行研究,并以第一或最后作者的身份进行研究。H和Hm指数是否受到不同作者模式的影响尚未得到检验。方法:使用公开可用的Scopus数据库,我检查了1990年至2019年期间以单一作者、第一作者、中作者或最后作者发表的研究文章数量与h指数和hm指数之间的关系,研究对象是18231名健康科学领域的主要研究人员。结果:调整职业时间和其他文章类型后,h指数与单作者文章数(偏Pearson r -0.06)和第一作者文章数(-0.08)呈负相关,与中位作者文章数(0.64)和末位作者文章数(0.21)呈正相关。相比之下,所有相关的hm指数都是正的(单作者文章为0.04,第一作者文章为0.18,中间列表文章为0.24,最后作者文章为0.46)。结论:H-index和Hm-index并不反映相同的作者模式:完全署名的H-index主要与中排作者相关,而部分署名的H-index受更平衡的发表模式驱动,与最后作者的文章关系最密切。由于绩效指标可能起到激励作用,因此应该仔细考虑引用指标的选择。