Global Trends in the Value of Author Order Across Medical Publications: A Cross-Sectional Bibliometric Study

Abstract

This study aimed to analyse the value of author order across countries, within the ‘Medicine General Internal’ and ‘Surgery’ fields, to enhance transparency and fairness in academic evaluations, particularly in international collaborative research. A cross-sectional bibliometric study was conducted using data from 2,845,748 papers published in 2022 across over 18,000 journals listed on Web of Science. The study focused on 124,736 papers from the ‘Medicine General Internal’ and ‘Surgery’ fields published in the top 19 countries. The analysis examined the position of the corresponding author relative to other co-authors by country and specialty. Hierarchical clustering was applied to identify patterns and group countries based on author order. Three distinct clusters were identified with regard to the corresponding author's position. In Cluster A (South Korea, China and Taiwan), the corresponding author was often the last author. In Cluster B (India, Japan, Italy, Türkiye and Spain), the corresponding author was frequently the second author. Cluster C (the United States, England and Germany) included countries where the corresponding author was typically the first author. The findings underscore the need for clear, internationally accepted author order standards. Establishing such standards is crucial for promoting fairness, transparency and efficiency in international collaborative research and for ensuring equitable scientific communication.