Mega Authorship from a Bibliometric Point of View
List of Authors
  • Sen, B.K.

Keyword
  • Authorship pattern, Mega authorship, Collaborative research, Bibliometrics, Citation analysis

Abstract
  • A research contribution by ten or more authors has been termed as the work of mega-authorship. The study conducted with a sample of 1294 papers published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America during February - July 1996 shows that about 5% of the papers fall under the category of mega-authorship. Mega-authorship seems to picture better the international collaborative scenario in the field of scientific research. Attempts to identify the causes of mega-authorship and discuss its impact on author indexes, indexing services, citations, and the problem it may create in the identification of the principal contributor of a basic idea.

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