Inflated numbers of authors over time have not been just due to increasing research complexity
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Papatheodorou, S. I.
Trikalinos, T. A.
Ioannidis, J. P.
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peer-reviewed
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J Clin Epidemiol
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OBJECTIVE: To examine trends in and determinants of the number of authors in clinical studies. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: We analyzed determinants of the number of authors in 633 articles of randomized trials and 313 articles of nonrandomized studies included in large meta-analyses (seven and six topics, respectively). Analyses were adjusted for topic. We also evaluated 310 randomly sampled case reports that had an abstract and described a single case. RESULTS: After adjusting for topic and other determinants, for both randomized trials and nonrandomized studies, the number of authors increased by 0.8 per decade (P<0.001). Topic was a strong determinant of the number of authors; other independent factors included journal impact factor, multinational authorship, and (for randomized trials) article length and sample size. Trials from South Europe (+1.1 authors) and North America (+0.9) and nonrandomized studies from South Europe (+1.8) had more authors than studies from North Europe (P<0.001). For case reports, only geographic location and article length were significantly related with author numbers. CONCLUSION: The number of authors in articles of randomized and nonrandomized studies has increased over time, even after adjusting for the topic, size, and visibility of a study. The academic coinage of authorship may be suffering from inflation.
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*Authorship, Bibliometrics, Biomedical Research/*trends, Humans, Medical Records/statistics & numerical data, Periodicals as Topic/statistics & numerical data/trends, Publishing/statistics & numerical data/trends, Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic/statistics & numerical data/trends
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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18471658
http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0895435607002909/1-s2.0-S0895435607002909-main.pdf?_tid=3111eb1fc621269bf58a2434e9d52fcf&acdnat=1333363818_646b5fd38a5dcc2be7abea3f77f62360
http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0895435607002909/1-s2.0-S0895435607002909-main.pdf?_tid=3111eb1fc621269bf58a2434e9d52fcf&acdnat=1333363818_646b5fd38a5dcc2be7abea3f77f62360
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en
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Πανεπιστήμιο Ιωαννίνων. Σχολή Επιστημών Υγείας. Τμήμα Ιατρικής