Conclusion
With the research byLong, Allison andMcGinnis, Cole andCole, an-Garfield an initial understanding of the consequences of multiple authorship for empirical studies of science is emerging.9 It is too early to suggest, asLong andMcGinnis do, that indices which disgegard multiple authorship are without serious short-comings. The best advise would be to use measures which take multiple authorship into account, compare them with others that do not, and examine any differences that might emerge. At least for the data will which I have worked, multiple authorship makes a considerable difference. Although little difference is found with the data collected by long and his colleagues when examined within an unclear regression analysis framework, it would seem premature to recommend unadjusted counts. The best advice to the prospective researcher would be to collect complete information on the number of authors for all published work and all citations assuming that difference between adjusted and unadjusted counts will emerge and be comfortable with the knowledge that if it does, the measures used can properly treat the data.
The major point I made earlier, that the failure to adjust for multiple authorship is the most serious error in empirical judgment made in the sociology of science, emerges more forcefully. The error will require substantial redevelopment of previous empirical literature constructed with these faulty measures.
Finally, the point should not be lost that the most serious problem remains and that is the validity of the “paper model” of science with examines article and citation counts to understand this complex dynamic project of human inquiry.10
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References and notes
J. S. LONG, R. MCGINNIS, On Adjusting Productivity measures for Multiple Authorship Scientometrics, 4 (1982) 379.
Using the 4.5 million source articles indexed in theScience Citation Index from 1961 to 1976,Garfield constructed two lists of the 250 most-cited authors using both normal (all items counted once) and straight counts (only primary authored counted).Garfield observed, “When we compared (the two lists) only 69 names — 28% of the total — were the same” (p. 9). See E. GAFRIELD, The 250 Most-Cited Primary Authors, 1961–1975. Part III. Each Author's Mostcited Publication,Current Contents, 51 (1977), 5–20.
M. S. BARTLETT, The Use of Transformations,Biometrics, 3 (1974), 39–52; S. Chatterjee, B. price,Regression Analysis by Example, Wiley, New York 1977.
D. J. de SOLLA PRICE and D. B. BEAVER, Collaboration in an Invisible College,American Psychologist, 21 (1966), 1011–1018, quote at 1014.
In a related studySachs, Hedderich, Venzke, Krisch, Duncker, Dierking andDierking examined differences in biomedical journal literature in 1960 and 1977 and found that the proportion of original articles with more than three authors increased from 9.6 to 50.3 percent. TheLong andMcGinnis data were from biochemists who received their degrees between 1957 and 1963. If they were to conduct their study with a more recent sample, the impact of multiple authorship might be more pronounced. L. SACHS, J. HEDDERICH, J. VENZKE, R. KRISCH, G. DUNCKER, C. DIERING, and H. DIERKING, Wissenschaftliche Aufsatze und Zeitschriften fruher und jetzt: mit einigen Daten zur Aufsatzstruktur von Originalien der Klinischen Wochenschrift,Nachrichten für Dokumentation, 31 (1980) 107–115.
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J. S. LONG, P. ALLISON and R. MCGINNIS, Entrance Into the Academic Career,American Sociological Review, 44 (1979), 816–830; J. COLE, S. COLE,Social Stratification in Science, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1973, and E. GARFIELD,Citation Indexing: Its Theory and Application in Science, Technology and the Humanities Wiley, New York, 1979.
D. LINDSEY, Assessing Quality in Science, in:The Scientific Publication System in Science Jossey-Bass, San Francisco 1978.
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Lindsey, D. Further evidence for adjusting for multiple authorship. Scientometrics 4, 389–395 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02135124
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02135124