Understanding International Differences in Academic Author Order in General Medicine Publications

Area of Science:

• Medical research
• Bibliometrics
• International collaboration

Background:

• Multinational research in general medicine is increasing.
• Lack of standardized author byline policies causes international conflict.
• Author order conventions differ globally, impacting research collaboration.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate international variations in author byline order.
• To identify differences in the placement of the corresponding author across countries.
• To provide insights for smoother global research partnerships.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of publicly available data from Journal Citation Reports and Web of Science.
• Focus on original articles in the "Medicine, General, & Internal" category from 2020.
• Examination of author byline data from the top ten publishing countries.

Main Results:

• The USA, China, Germany, England, Japan, France, Italy, Canada, India, and Australia were the top ten publishing countries.
• Japan exhibited the highest percentage of the second author serving as the corresponding author.
• This percentage was 25 times higher in Japan than in the USA.

Conclusions:

• Significant international disparities exist in author order conventions.
• Understanding these differences can improve multinational research collaboration.
• Standardizing author byline practices could mitigate misunderstandings in global research.