King J T
Center for Health Services Research, VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System, and Department of Neurological Surgery, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.
Neurosurgery. 2000 Aug;47(2):435-40. doi: 10.1097/00006123-200008000-00032.
Authorship proliferation in biomedical research has become rampant; the proportion of single-author articles is decreasing, the percentage of multiauthor articles is increasing, and the number of authors per publication is increasing. To determine whether authorship trends in the North American neurosurgical literature parallel trends observed in other areas of the biomedical literature, I studied original neurosurgical research articles published in the past 50 years.
I sampled clinical, anatomic, and laboratory investigations in Neurosurgery and the Journal of Neurosurgery at 10-year intervals from 1945 to 1995. For each research article, I determined the number of authors, the countries of origin, and the educational degrees of the authors.
The mean number of authors per article has increased steadily in the past 50 years, from 1.8 (standard deviation, +/-0.8) authors per article in 1945 to 4.6 (standard deviation, +/-2.1) authors in 1995. The proportion of single-author articles is decreasing; these articles accounted for 43% of articles in 1945 and only 3% of articles in 1995. Increases in the proportions of non-M.D. authors and of articles originating outside the United States were also observed.
The proliferation of multiauthor articles and the decrease in the proportion of single-author articles in the neurosurgical literature parallel trends observed in many other areas of biomedical research. Possible explanations include larger research teams, variable or absent journal criteria for defining authorship, and the increased awarding of "gift" authorships.
生物医学研究中的作者数量激增现象已十分猖獗；单作者文章的比例在下降，多作者文章的比例在上升，且每份出版物的作者数量也在增加。为了确定北美神经外科文献中的作者趋势是否与生物医学文献其他领域所观察到的趋势一致，我研究了过去50年发表的神经外科原创研究文章。
我从1945年至1995年每隔10年对《神经外科》和《神经外科杂志》上的临床、解剖学和实验室研究进行抽样。对于每篇研究文章，我确定了作者数量、作者的原籍国以及作者的教育程度。
在过去50年中，每篇文章的平均作者数量稳步增加，从1945年每篇文章1.8名作者（标准差，±0.8）增加到1995年的4.6名作者（标准差，±2.1）。单作者文章的比例在下降；这些文章在1945年占文章总数的43%，而在1995年仅占3%。非医学博士作者的比例以及美国以外地区发表文章的比例也有所增加。
神经外科文献中多作者文章的激增以及单作者文章比例的下降与生物医学研究许多其他领域所观察到的趋势一致。可能的解释包括研究团队规模扩大、期刊在定义作者身份方面的标准多变或缺失，以及“赠送”作者身份的情况增多。
