Geography of authorship: How geography shapes authorship attribution in big team science

Abstract

The steady growth of large geographically dispersed research projects challenges existing norms for authorship attribution and has raised concerns over global inequalities in authorship opportunities. This paper therefore examines how geography plays a role in authorship attribution to local researchers that contribute to large scientific teams from various cities across the globe. We develop theory that considers how authorship opportunities for local researchers may vary depending on how they are spatially embedded in projects and the local resources they draw upon. We empirically apply this framework to the context of multi-city clinical trials where a common authorship challenge concerns the attribution of site investigators on publications. To account for selection effects in our empirical set-up, we estimate authorship likelihood conditional on data collection contributions. Our results show that authorship likelihoods differ considerably across research projects and cities. We observe that, after controlling for project characteristics, authorship likelihoods are higher when local site investigators are located in cities that are geographically proximate to coordinating sponsors and when they face less national competition. We also find that local scientific reputation and the extent to which project contributions are directed to local problems are positively related to authorship likelihood. Observed findings are markedly more pronounced for industry-sponsored versus publicly-sponsored trials and when attributing authorship to a lead author compared to any author. Based on these findings, we discuss various ways through which authorship policies and initiatives could foster equitable authorship opportunities in large teams independent of location and as a fundamental principle for the conduct of science.

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