Authorship Proliferation of Research Articles in Top 10 Orthopaedic Journals: A 70-Year Analysis

Ellen Lutnick · Antonio Cusano · David C. Sing · Emily J. Curry · Xinning Li

13 citations0/0 files storedJAAOS Global Research and Reviews

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

scientometrics and bibliometrics research Academic Writing and Publishing Psychology Research and Bibliometrics

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Scholarly impact has been used to measure faculty productivity and academic contribution throughout academia. Traditionally, the number of articles authored has been the primary metric for scholarly impact regarding academic promotion and reputation. We hypothesize that over time, the nature of authorship has evolved to include more authors per research article throughout the history of orthopaedic literature. METHODS: Bibliometric data for all original research article abstracts were extracted from PubMED for the 10 highest rated H5-index orthopaedic clinical journals ("American Journal of Sports Medicine," "Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery American Volume," "Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research "Spine," "Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy," "Journal of Arthroplasty," "Arthroscopy," "The Spine Journal," "European Spine Journal," and "Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery British Volume/Bone & Joint Journal"). The number of authors per article was then analyzed over time using the Cochran-Armitage trend test. RESULTS: A total of 106,529 original articles were analyzed over a 70-year period. The number of authors increased significantly over time from a mean of 1.4 authors (SD: 0.62) in 1946 to 5.7 authors (SD: 3.1) in 2019, representing an average relative increase of 4.3% per year (P < 0.05). The three oldest journals had the lowest average authors (Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery Am Volume: 1946, mean 3.7 authors [SD: eight]; Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery Br Volume/Bone & Joint Journal: 1948, mean: 3.6 authors [SD: 7.5]; Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research: 1963, mean 3.3 authors [SD: 2.9]). The three newest journals had the highest average authors (European Spine Journal: 1992, mean 5.3 authors [SD: 3.3]; Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy: 1993, mean 5.5 authors [SD: 6.7 authors; The Spine Journal: 2003, mean 5.2 authors [SD: 3.6]). DISCUSSION: Original research articles published in orthopaedic academic journals have experienced an increase in authorship over time. Although our data cannot explain what has driven this change, increasing cooperation between collaborators may represent less contribution per author over time.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 13 citations exist upstream.

References

2016Trends and comparison of female first authorship in high impact medical journals: observational study (1994-2014)2004Changes in authorship patterns in prestigious US medical journals 2017Social Media Scholarship and Alternative Metrics for Academic Promotion and Tenure 2008Inflated numbers of authors over time have not been just due to increasing research complexity 2019How Well Represented Are Women Orthopaedic Surgeons and Residents on Major Orthopaedic Editorial Boards and Publications?2018Increasing importance of research metrics: Journal Impact Factor and h-index 2016Trends in Authorship Characteristics in The American Journal of Sports Medicine , 1994 to 2014 2019A 46-year Analysis of Gender Trends in Academic Authorship in Orthopaedic Sports Medicine

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.