Multi-authorship and Research Analytics

Abstract

The Web of Science indexes a growing number of research articles with 1,000 or more unique authors or author addresses across more than 100 different countries. The combination of many authors/many countries creates a complex authorship pattern that differs from more typical academic papers and drives elevated citation rates. Multi-authorship and research analytics examines the effects of complex and hyper-authorship by author, country, and discipline. The report explores two patterns linking complex authorship with effects that increase citation rates: a general increase associated with multi-authorship (more than 10 authors and more than five countries); and more perturbing outcomes of hyper-authorship (more than 100 authors spread across more than 30 countries).