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Beyond authorship: Analyzing contributions in PLOS ONE and the challenges of appropriate attribution

INFORMAZIONI SU QUESTO ARTICOLO

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Figure 1.

Data extraction, cleaning, preparation and validation.
Data extraction, cleaning, preparation and validation.

Figure 2.

Three levels of potential inappropriate authorship.
Three levels of potential inappropriate authorship.

Figure 3.

Number of publications by country/region in PLOS ONE (01/2018-06/2023).
Number of publications by country/region in PLOS ONE (01/2018-06/2023).

Figure 4.

Potential inappropriate authorship concentration index by country/region.
Potential inappropriate authorship concentration index by country/region.

Figure 5.

Description of affiliation types presented in Table 5. Source: https://ror.readme.io/docs/ror-data-structure
Description of affiliation types presented in Table 5. Source: https://ror.readme.io/docs/ror-data-structure

CRediT criteria based on whether they are sufficient on their own for authorship or not.

Contributor role Role definition Authorship eligibility
Conceptualization Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims. Yes
Data Curation Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse. Yes
Formal Analysis Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data. Yes
Investigation Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection. Yes
Methodology Development or design of methodology; creation of models Yes
Software Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components. Yes
Validation Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs. Yes
Visualization Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation. Yes
Writing – Original Draft Preparation Creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation). Yes
Writing – Review & Editing Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including pre- or post-publication stages. Yes
Funding Acquisition Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication. No
Project Administration Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution. No
Resources Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools. No
Supervision Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team. No

Number of DOI-based papers that fall into categories 1-3 of potential inappropriate authorship.

Authorship type Not meet authorship criteria Potential authorship by resources Potential APC ring Count # by type % by type
Appropriate authorship No No No 74,346 74,346 90.86%
Yes No No 4849
No Yes No 2008
Inappropriate authorship Yes Yes No 585 7477 9.14%
No No Yes 21
Yes No Yes 14
Total 81,823 81,823 100.00%

Median total works count and citations number by author, by authorship type.

Authorship type Total works count by author (median) Total number of citations received by author (median)
Potential APC ring 104 1594
Not meet authorship criteria 91 1316
Potential authorship by resources 58 849
Authorship meets the criteria defined by PLOS ONE 38 481

Specialization index in inappropriate authorship by affiliation type.

Affiliation type Potential APC ring Potential authorship by resources Not meet authorship criteria
Other 2.97 0.67 0.52
Company 2.06 1.54 0.99
Nonprofit 1.58 1.00 0.69
Facility 1.22 1.34 0.94
Education 1.01 0.87 0.99
Healthcare 0.98 1.20 1.18
Unknown 0.39 1.17 0.96
Government 0.00 1.17 1.05
Archive 0.00 1.16 0.48

Number of authors according to types of inappropriate authorship.

Authorship type # by type # by group % % by group
APC ring 46 0.01%
Authorship by resources 5 087 14,022 0.93% 2.56%
Not meet authorship criteria 8 889 1.63%
Authorship meets the criteria defined by PLOS ONE 532,858 532,858 97.44% 97.44%
Total 546,880 546,880 100.00% 100.00%
eISSN:
2543-683X
Lingua:
Inglese
Frequenza di pubblicazione:
4 volte all'anno
Argomenti della rivista:
Computer Sciences, Information Technology, Project Management, Databases and Data Mining