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Title
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Does the Winner Take it All? Increasing Inequality in Scientific Authorship
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Author
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Rauhut, Heiko
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Winter, Fabian
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Johann, David
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Research Area
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Social Institutions
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Topic
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Educational Institutions
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Abstract
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Scientific authorship has become a hot topic in the social sciences. We present three avenues addressing this topic from different perspectives to illustrate in which direction research on inequalities in the context of scientific authorship and academic publications may move. We draw on data from the Web of Science focusing on the field of sociology. We demonstrate that (i) the alphabetical order of co‐authors' names sends out an ambiguous signal about the actual contributions of each team member, (ii) attention is increasingly paid to a few contributions that are widely cited, and (iii) well‐connected authors tend to work together. In short, this essay suggests a rise in authorship inequalities regarding the attention authors and their articles receive. Sociology and related social sciences are arguably developing into academic winner‐take‐all markets.
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Identifier
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etrds0459
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extracted text
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Does the Winner Take it All?
Increasing Inequality in Scientific
Authorship
HEIKO RAUHUT, FABIAN WINTER, and DAVID JOHANN
Abstract
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Scientific authorship has become a hot topic in the social sciences. We present three
avenues addressing this topic from different perspectives to illustrate in which direction research on inequalities in the context of scientific authorship and academic
publications may move. We draw on data from the Web of Science focusing on the
field of sociology. We demonstrate that (i) the alphabetical order of co-authors’ names
sends out an ambiguous signal about the actual contributions of each team member, (ii) attention is increasingly paid to a few contributions that are widely cited,
and (iii) well-connected authors tend to work together. In short, this essay suggests
a rise in authorship inequalities regarding the attention authors and their articles
receive. Sociology and related social sciences are arguably developing into academic
winner-take-all markets.
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INTRODUCTION
Research is not an end in itself. The academic job requires the dissemination
of research results. Traditionally, researchers publish their results in monographs, book chapters in edited volumes, articles in scientific journals, and
conference proceedings. Accordingly, authorship represents a core element
of research.
Authorship, in turn, fulfills different functions (e.g., Birnholtz, 2006;
Jabbehdari & Walsh, 2017; Johann & Mayer, 2017; Whitley, 2000): (i) It
associates ideas, discoveries, and knowledge with relevant authors in a
field, which is why authorship attributes credit. (ii) As publications and
citations are also employed as evaluation criteria for academic researchers,
publications represent the “academic currency” to obtain tenure positions
and fellowships as well as third-party funding and grants. Thus, authorship
adds to the symbolic capital of scientists by contributing to scientists’
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert A. Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
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0.0003
0.0002
0
0.0001
Proportion of articles with the keyword authorship
40
30
20
10
0
Number of articles with the keyword authorship
1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
2015
1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
Year
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50
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2015
Year
Figure 1 Number and proportion of articles with the keyword authorship in the
social sciences. Source: Web of Science.
reputation. Finally, (iii) authorship means authors have the responsibility for
the claims they make, but also for the ethical integrity of their research and
potential mistakes in their research.
Credit, reputation, and responsibility associated with academic authorship
suggest that authorship is a hot research topic in academia, particularly in
the social sciences. Presenting data from the Web of Science Figure 1 demonstrates that the number and proportion of scientific publications dealing with
authorship has risen considerably over the last two decades.
One likely reason for the increasing number and proportion of scientific
publications addressing authorship is related to the average number of
co-authors listed per publication. The average number of co-authors per
publication increased from 1.6 in 1990 to 3.1 in 2015 in the social sciences and
from 2.7 in 1990 to 5.3 in 2015 across all disciplines (Source: Web of Science).
The motivations for more academic collaborations are manifold. To name
but a few, scientific work is becoming more and more specialized, complex,
and multidisciplinary. Moreover, the requirement to share data and facilities
with other researchers leads to multi-team research (e.g., Katz & Martin,
1997; Lissoni, Montobbio, & Zirulia, 2013; Teixeira da Silva & Dobranszki,
2016; Wuchty, Jones, & Uzzi, 2007).
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Another reason for the increasing number and proportion of scientific publications addressing authorship may be due to the substantial importance
that publication outputs have gained in a changing, publication-focused
academic environment. As a result of the introduction of New Public Management in science and the implementation of performance-based funding
systems, scientists compete for financial resources and jobs just like professional athletes compete for athletic victories. One core evaluation criterion in
performance-based funding systems is the scientists’ individual publication
record including the number of received citations of each publication.
Hence, today, an increasing number of scientists aim to publish as many
papers as possible, preferably in high impact journals being widely read and
often cited. Since the seminal work of Merton (1968) and his introduction of
the “Matthew Effect,” it is well known that success in acquiring publications
and citations is unequally distributed among researchers, however (Barabäsi
et al., 2002; DiPrete & Eirich, 2006; Newman, 2001, 2004).
The described development in scientific authorship engenders several
consequences. Johann and Mayer (2017) suggest that the larger the number
of co-authors per paper the more ambiguous the following aspects become:
who contributed how much and to which parts of the publication; who
should merit, credit, and earn reputation; and who is responsible for potential errors (see also Birnholtz, 2006; Lissoni et al., 2013). A large number of
co-authors per paper thus implies potential conflicts and inequalities. For
example, collaboration structures or the order of authors in publications
become increasingly important: Which author contributed to which part of
the paper? Is it inevitably true that the first author contributed most? How
much have the second, third, or last author contributed? Or, in more general
terms, does the order of co-authors allow the reader of the publications
to identify the author(s) who should be granted most of the credit and
reputation for the publication?
Based on these considerations, we present three avenues to investigate
scientific authorship and academic publications. Our goal is to illustrate
with examples the direction in which respective research on inequalities
in the context of scientific authorship and academic publications could
potentially move. We employ data from the Web of Science focusing on the
four most important German-speaking journals in the field of sociology, that
is, (i) Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, (ii) Zeitschrift für
Soziologie, (iii) Soziale Welt, and (iv) Berliner Journal für Soziologie. These journals are the most prominent ones and fully cover the range of sociological
research outlets in Germany. The analyzed time period is 1966–2010. Our
strategy is as follows:
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
1. First, we address co-authorship norms and their potential implications
for the attention individual authors receive for their work. Here, norms
regulate who should be attributed with authorship and in what order
the researchers granted authorship are listed on the publication.
2. Second, we address the space accredited to the work of a particular
author in other researchers’ work. This space can be roughly quantified
by the extent to which the authors’ work is referenced in other authors’
work in direct citations. More precisely, we focus on the increasingly
unequal distribution of citations.
3. Finally, we focus on the prestige researchers gain in their scholarly network by looking at who collaborates with whom and exploring whether
we find evidence for increased clustering of core researchers who tend
to collaborate with each other.
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Investigating inequalities in the context of scientific authorship and academic publications from three very different perspectives makes our analyses
quite innovative compared to previous attempts. We consider such a broad
approach essential to fully understand the extent as well as the causes and
consequences of inequalities in academic scholarship. Our results suggest
that researchers are more likely to be successful if they understand the prevailing authorship norms (in their own and in cognate disciplines), skillfully
manage their reputation, and strategically develop their scientific network.
Moreover, the results indicate that future research should reflect and explore
the importance of factors such as name ordering and who cites whom for
performance criteria and research output in more detail.
THREE EXEMPLARY TRENDS OF INCREASING INEQUALITIES
IN SCIENTIFIC AUTHORSHIP
CO-AUTHORSHIP NORMS AND THEIR POTENTIAL IMPLICATIONS
Within the field of sociology, there are two different prevailing ways of listing the order of authors’ names. Let us think about some of the most famous
book publications in sociology, The Social Construction of Reality by Berger and
Luckmann (1975) as well as The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels
(1967). While the authors of the former book are listed alphabetically, the
authors of the latter book are listed in a nonalphabetical order. An alphabetical order may be an expression of equal contributions to the publication
by the individual authors. The individual contribution of an author is then
roughly 1/N, which we refer to as the equality norm. Listing authors nonalphabetically, in turn, usually indicates a deviation from the 1/N rule. The
first mentioned author is typically the researcher having made the greatest
contribution. We refer to this kind of authorship as the contribution norm.
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alphabetical rate − 1∕n!
1 − 1∕n!
The observed and the intended rate can differ substantively. Often, a majority of alphabetically ordered articles masks a minority of articles that is actually intended to be in alphabetical order. This especially occurs when most of
the co-authors in a discipline work in small teams. Referring to Equation 1,
the difference between observed and corrected rates increases (i) the greater
1. The sequence of authors has yet another consequence. In the case of three or more authors, the
persons bringing up the rear risk being caught in the “et al.-trap”: their names disappear from in-text
citations and are thus less visible.
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Equality and contribution norms should be taken into account in evaluating publishing performance and reputation attribution.1 The preservation
of an equality norm in teams and its external perception play a key role in
the social structural measurement of the distribution of reputation in the
system of scholarship. The perception of the extent of an equality norm
among authors may be misleading, however. When browsing journals,
conference programs or edited volumes, it appears that equal treatment of
co-authors is widespread. But the share of publications in which authors are
listed alphabetically and the share of publications in which the alphabetical
order is actually intended because the authors (almost) contributed equally
can differ widely. Especially in the case of relatively small groups of authors,
which are still common in sociology, a large share of alphabetically ordered
papers can be ordered alphabetically by chance.
After all, the probability that two authors of a paper are presented in alphabetical order, but actually follow the contribution norm, is 50%. In the case
of two authors, the first letter of the “lead” author’s last name is as likely to
appear earlier in the alphabet as the first letter of the co-author’s last name.
In case of three co-authors, it is already far less probable that the share of the
contributions follows the rule of alphabetic ordering by first letters in last
names. The probability of alphabetic order with three co-authors is just 17%.
As the number of authors increases, the probability declines. More precisely,
with the number of authors, n, the probability of an accidental coincidence of
contributions and alphabetical order declines by 1/n!. This is illustrated by
Figure 2, which displays the chances for up to five authors.
Using the probability 1/n! that refers to the random occurrence of an alphabetical order of co-authors, it is possible to correct the observed rate of articles
with alphabetically ordered co-authors. This allows us to derive the rate with
which the authors intentionally listed their names in alphabetical order. The
prevalence of the equality norm among sociologists for articles with the same
number of authors, n, can be estimated using the following correction formula (Rauhut & Winter, 2012; Waltman, 2012):
p(equality norm) =
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P(Alphabetic ordering by chance)
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
1
2
3
4
5
Authors
Figure 2 The probability that all authors are listed alphabetically merely by
chance is a decreasing function of the number of co-authors.
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the number of alphabetically ordered papers and (ii) the greater the number
of co-authored publications with two authors are. Hence, obtaining an undistorted estimate of the extent of the equality norm is made considerably more
difficult in disciplines with smaller teams of co-authors.
Rauhut and Winter (2018) demonstrate that the majority of sociological
publications are still written by individual authors. The share of single
authorship in sociology is nevertheless declining and the proportion of
co-authored publications is on the rise. Most co-authored publications
in sociology are written by two authors. If we assume that a majority
of collaborative authorships in a discipline of pairs of authors occurs
and that two-thirds of these articles follow an alphabetical order, then
we can assume that only one-third are, in fact, intended to be in alphabetical order. If the observed rate is only a little bit less, for example,
60%, only 20% are intended to be in alphabetical order following the
given assumptions of this model. Sociology largely moves within this
range.
We refer to the difference between observed and intended rate of alphabetical ordering as the equality illusion. In the above examples, the extent of
the equality illusion was one-third in the first case and 40% in the second
case. We use the word “illusion” here in order to draw attention to a fallacy
that consists of prematurely drawing conclusions from the observed rates
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about the underlying intentions of the actors involved. The underlying
mechanism that has been thus far described can be called a statistical
fallacy.
In addition to a statistical fallacy, however, a framing mechanism can also
reinforce the extent of the equality illusion. The so-called confirmation bias
(Nickerson, 1998) is often decisive for the subjective impression of the world.
This widespread error leads one to consider the evidence in question in the
spirit of one’s own preconceptions: in our case, of one’s own norm. It can be
shown that, with the same data, the assessment of equality by representatives
of different norms can diverge by up to 90%.
The calculation of the equality illusion is less extreme when only the statistical fallacy is taken into account. In this case, the extent of the equality illusion
is quantified as the difference between the observed and corrected rates of
alphabetically ordered papers. For the field of sociology, Rauhut and Winter
(2018) illustrate that the observable majority of articles follow an alphabetical
ordering (observed rates of over 50%). However, presumably, only a minority deliberately intended this order (corrected rates of under 50%). Moreover,
Rauhut and Winter reveal that the equality illusion has increased over the
years. This means that the publishing market increasingly favors the equality
illusion. Accordingly, a growing number of sociologists may overestimate the
norm of equal treatment among co-authors. Even though the picture suggests
an apparent equal distribution of reputation among co-authors, the contribution norm is coming to play an ever more important role in the business of
publishing.
To sum up, the alphabetical order of co-authors’ names sends out an
ambiguous signal about the actual contributions of each team member.
In this respect, future research should factor in the effects and biases
associated with the misperception of authors’ contributions. For example,
how do proponents of the equality norm or the contribution norm, respectively, view the prevalence of “their” behavior in the community, given
the increasing number of multiauthored work? How do the biases affect
the evaluation of candidates for tenure positions in potentially mixed
commissions?
THE INCREASINGLY UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION OF CITATIONS
Our second avenue addresses the space accredited to the work of a
particular author in other researchers’ work. As mentioned earlier, a
widespread indicator of the influence of scholarly work is the number of
citations their publications obtain. Compared to other measures, citations
have the advantage of measuring how often an article has been noted
and by whom it has been noted. As such, citations represent a measure
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of attention of a scholarly argument in relation to other researchers’
work.2
Using the Gini coefficient in order to investigate the distribution of
citations between 1966 and 2010, the trend in citation inequality appears to
be U-shaped. In the 1960s, the bottom half of all articles received around
one-sixth of all citations, while the upper ten percent received two-thirds
of all citations. In the 1980s, the unequal concentration of citations of a few
articles appears to have been canceled out. It is noteworthy that, today,
inequality is on the rise again and that the majority of citations refer to the
same standard articles (Rauhut & Winter, 2018). In other words, the gap
between normally cited and highly cited works first has become smaller,
but then grew larger again. Hence, the concentration of many citations on a
few articles first decreased and then increased again. Two observations help
understand this trend: (i) Fewer articles receive no citations whatsoever.
In the past, noncited publications used to be an exception from the rule,
but it appears to be norm today that publications are cited at least once.
At the same time, (ii) most citations are condensed to a smaller number of
publications.
To sum up, the segmentation of attention by citation has increased. In
this respect, future research could address the causes and consequences
of this development. For example, which role does the increasing number
of co-authors per paper play for the segmentation of attention? To what
extent is the increased segmentation of attention by citation reflected in the
performance-based allocation of funds?
THE INCREASINGLY UNEQUAL NETWORK STRUCTURES AMONG AUTHORS
Our third avenue focuses on the connections of scholars among one another.
Network positions can be understood as the consolidated visibility of social
capital in Coleman’s (1990, pp. 300 ff.) sense. Network positions are crucial
for productive work relationships and opportunities to accumulate additional attention. They thus represent an important aspect that may foster
social inequality in academia. Denser networks with other scholars and
taking on central roles within the scholarly networks increase researchers’
prestige, their chances of placing their own work in (better) journals and
obtaining research support from funding institutions (Merton, 1988) as well
as labor market and career opportunities (Plümper & Schimmelfennig, 2007).
A simple measure of interconnectedness is the network degree. Quantifying the number of contacts of an actor in a defined network, this measure
2. Of course, self-citations do not add much to the reputation of researchers. Please note that our
analyses do not distinguish between self-citations and citations from other researchers. However, we do
not regard it as likely that this would bias our results.
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is significant for the direct exchange relationship such as scientific favor or
scientific exchange. In academia, the network degree can be measured by the
number of co-authors. However, this is not a sufficient indicator of advantageous embedding in the network of researchers. It is also relevant to consider
whether a researcher takes on a key role within a network. A central position in a network facilitates quicker access to relevant information. Accordingly, Burt (2004) suggests that “broker positions” offer major advantages
for obtaining new ideas, alternative standpoints, and creative stimulation.
A simple measure of centrality, that is, playing a key role within the network,
is closeness. For each actor, closeness indicates the average of the shortest
paths from one actor to all other actors in a network. Thus, great closeness
implies that a researcher has published with colleagues involved in their own
networks in which they occupy a central position and who are also closely
connected to other co-authors. The two measures considered here (network
degree and closeness) can be interpreted as networking opportunities: The more
co-authors an author has (degree) and the closer these co-authors are to other
scholars and other potential co-authors (closeness), the easier it is for the
author to find and collaborate with new co-authors.
There is considerable inequality in the number of co-authors in sociology and this inequality remained highly stable over the past decades.
Moreover, Rauhut and Winter (2018) show that inequality in closeness to
other co-authors has only changed marginally over time. Accordingly, one
might conclude that inequality in the possibilities for networking has not
substantially changed. However, this conclusion is misleading because it
has changed who is connected to whom. It is important to maintain ties to
“important” people. Put differently, research on network structures among
authors should also consider the so-called eigenvector centrality (Bonacich,
1972, 1987) ascribing greater centrality to those actors who have ties to other
well-connected actors. The eigenvector centrality has increased over the
years, indicating an increase in inequality (Rauhut & Winter, 2018). Hence,
there is a trend to more segmented co-author networks: well-connected
co-authors preferably establish links to other well-connected co-authors.
In sum, increasing networking of well-connected co-authors who predominantly connect with each other further demonstrates that inequality
in the scholars’ statuses is on the rise. In this respect, future research
should address the causes and consequences of this development. For
example, do well-connected authors particularly collaborate with other
well-connected authors due to strategic considerations or is it an unintended
by-product of their interests and actions? In addition, the question of what
this development means for the allocation of funds and jobs should be
raised. If well-connected authors benefit in the allocation of funds and jobs,
we may speculate that this development represents an additional catalyst
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of deepening inequalities. It remains open, in which areas initially small
inequalities develop into large cleavages.
DISCUSSION
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Focusing on the field of sociology, this essay discussed three avenues to investigate inequality with regard to scientific authorship and academic publications. Our contribution is threefold: First, we have shown that the alphabetical order of co-authors’ surnames sends out an ambiguous signal about the
actual contributions of each team member. In addition, our analyses suggest that a growing number of authors in the social sciences overestimates
the norm of equal treatment among co-authors. Second, inequality in the
form of citations has undergone a similar trend although with some limitations. Sociology is increasingly characterized to be a winner-take-all market
in terms of citations. A small number of articles receive a lot of attention so
that the importance of influential contributions is increasing today. Third,
science is increasingly characterized by a greater segmentation of co-authors’
networks: today, well-connected authors tend to work together, forming clusters of “winners.”
Social norms that increasingly attend to “high-impact” teamwork and
toward lead authors create an even greater concentration of success to
just a few authors. It is plausible that the growing divergence between
the objectively observed order of co-authors’ names and the subjective
perception of this ordering (“equality illusion”) leads to a reinforcement
of the concentration of success. Overall, these results provide support to
theoretical arguments on the concentration of success in the academic labor
market following the so-called Matthew effect (Barabäsi et al., 2002; DiPrete
& Eirich, 2006; Newman, 2001, 2004). In sum, sociology and related social
sciences are arguably developing into academic winner-take-all markets.
While we illustrated the direction research on inequalities in the context of
scientific authorship and academic publications could take, our analyses only
represent examples and selected trends. Future research should conduct
alternative bibliometric analyses and draw on additional measurements, for
example, from surveys and comparable analyses in other social sciences. It
should also focus on theory in order to understand the underlying mechanisms and the consequences these may have for the scientific community in
more detail.
Moreover, inequality is just one aspect further research on scientific authorship should address. Considering the growing size of research teams and the
increasing number of co-authors listed per publication, research on scientific
authorship should clarify the meaning of and criteria for authorship (Jabbehdari & Walsh, 2017). Past research suggests that authorship practices vary
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across disciplines (e.g., Jabbehdari & Walsh, 2017; Johann & Mayer, 2017;
Teixeira da Silva, 2011; Teixeira da Silva & Dobranszki, 2016). However,
current research suffers from lack of data. A systematic examination of
researchers’ authorship practices and internalized authorship norms, beliefs
and perceptions has yet to be achieved (Johann & Mayer, 2017). In this
context, future research should also investigate gift and ghost authorship
in greater detail (Jabbehdari & Walsh, 2017; Sauermann & Haeussler, 2017;
Walsh & Lee, 2015) as well as the relatively new phenomenon of “scientific
writers” (Johann et al., 2018).
As highlighted above, the conditions of text production in academia have
changed. Future research should, therefore, reflect and explore whether and
under which circumstances current performance criteria are still appropriate. Inherently, this also leads to the question how these conditions could
be revised to ensure that they adequately measure individual researchers’
contributions to the research output (e.g., Walsh & Lee, 2015).
While shedding light on the “objective” side of the winner-take-all market in
the social sciences, it remains open whether and to what extent researchers
are subjectively aware of this trend and how this affects motivation and
research behavior. To this end, our contribution may have practical implications for strategic career planning of scientists. Researchers may only have
little awareness of the trends in inequality regarding the order of names in
publications, citation acquisition, and networking. At the same time, it may
encourage scholars to plan publications and authorships more strategically.
However, this comes with a risk as well: research that increasingly focuses
on strategic career planning, optimization of reputation acquisition, and
instrumental networking may block intrinsic motivations and undermine
creativity and courage for great discoveries.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
All authors contributed equally to writing this manuscript. We thank Justus
Rathmann for help with data analyses in Section 1.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We acknowledge help with the literature research by Antonia Velicu. Heiko
Rauhut acknowledges funding from the SNSF by the Starting Grant BSSGIO_155981.
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Heiko Rauhut is full professor of Social Theory and Quantitative Methods at
the Institute of Sociology at the University of Zurich. He has been awarded an
SNSF Starting Grant on social norms, cooperation, and conflicts in scientific
collaborations. His research focuses on the emergence, change, and decay of
social norms, cooperation and conflicts, trends in collaborations in science
and measurement methods for scientific misconduct. Before working at the
University of Zurich, he has been at the ETH Zurich, University of Leipzig
and London School of Economics.
Fabian Winter, PhD, is a head of Max Planck Research Group "Mechanisms
of Normative Change" at the MPI Institute for Research on Collective Goods
in Bonn. He studies mechanisms determining different dynamics of normative change from an interdisciplinary perspective, aiming to understanding
and managing social change using a broad range of experimental and
non-experimental empirical methods.
David Johann is principal investigator of the Scientists Survey at the German Center for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW) and
assistant professor (“Oberassistent”) at the University of Zurich. His substantive research focuses on research methods in social sciences, scientific
authorship, implicit attitudes as well as electoral behavior. Before working
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
at the DZHW, he was a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of
Methods in the Social Sciences at the University of Vienna.
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