Author Order and Research Quality

Abstract

We observe a great deal of heterogeneity in the manner in which author orderings are assigned both across and within academic markets. To better understand this phenomenon, we develop and analyze a stochastic model of author orderings. In our model, authors work equally hard to obtain priority in listings but linal contributions arc stochastic. Further, research outlets differ in their quality hurdles. In this setting, our simulation results are consistent with two empirical regularities. First, we lind that the rate of alphabetization increases with the stringency with which papers are accepted for publication. Second, conditional on clearing the publication hurdle, quality increases with alphabetization. These findings arise because increases in the publication hurdle make it more likely that authors will exceed this threshold only when both contribute a high amount. This, in turn, leads to roughly equal contributions I alphabetization I and also generates a positive correlation between alphabetization and quality.

International Business Research: Coauthorship Patterns and Quality

“…Several studies have documented this trend in economics (Engers, Gans, Grant, & King, 1999;Joseph, Laband, & Patil, 2005), in finance (Brown, Chan, & Chen, 2004), and in marketing (Brown, Chan, & Lai, 2006). An increased alphabetical ordering of coauthor names is also evident.…”

Programmers, Professors, and Parasites: Credit and Co-Authorship in Computer Science

“…In particular, the ratio of alphabetized to non-alphabetized author lists began shrinking rapidly in 1996 from approximately 1:1 to 1:2 within the span of ten years. This pattern is not common to all research areas; in fact, alphabetization rates in ''top tier'' economics journals increased between 1978 and 2000 [12]. Thus, any explanation for this type of trend must be discipline specific and possibly even sub-discipline specific.…”

Alphabetization and the skewing of first authorship towards last names early in the alphabet

“…In the 1990s it was suggested that it was important that the order of authors reflected their contribution to an article (Savitz, 1999). Nevertheless, although it is often perceived that the first named author has made the largest contribution to an article (van Praag & van Praag, 2008) the assignment of credit varies from discipline to discipline (Engers, Gans, Grant & King, 1999) and even within disciplines (Laband, 2002;Joseph, Laband & Patil, 2005). This impacts on some citation counting methods used in research evaluation.…”