Hagen Nils T
Faculty of Biosciences and Aquaculture, Bodø University College, Bodø, Norway.
Scientometrics. 2010 Nov;85(2):567-579. doi: 10.1007/s11192-010-0214-8. Epub 2010 Mar 31.
A collection of coauthored papers is the new norm for doctoral dissertations in the natural and biomedical sciences, yet there is no consensus on how to partition authorship credit between PhD candidates and their coauthors. Guidelines for PhD programs vary but tend to specify only a suggested range for the number of papers to be submitted for evaluation, sometimes supplemented with a requirement for the PhD candidate to be the principal author on the majority of submitted papers. Here I use harmonic counting to quantify the actual amount of authorship credit attributable to individual PhD graduates from two Scandinavian universities in 2008. Harmonic counting corrects for the inherent inflationary and equalizing biases of routine counting methods, thereby allowing the bibliometrically identifiable amount of authorship credit in approved dissertations to be analyzed with unprecedented accuracy. Unbiased partitioning of authorship credit between graduates and their coauthors provides a post hoc bibliometric measure of current PhD requirements, and sets a de facto baseline for the requisite scientific productivity of these contemporary PhD's at a median value of approximately 1.6 undivided papers per dissertation. Comparison with previous census data suggests that the baseline has shifted over the past two decades as a result of a decrease in the number of submitted papers per candidate and an increase in the number of coauthors per paper. A simple solution to this shifting baseline syndrome would be to benchmark the amount of unbiased authorship credit deemed necessary for successful completion of a specific PhD program, and then monitor for departures from this level over time. Harmonic partitioning of authorship credit also facilitates cross-disciplinary and inter-institutional analysis of the scientific output from different PhD programs. Juxtaposing bibliometric benchmarks with current baselines may thus assist the development of harmonized guidelines and transparent transnational quality assurance procedures for doctoral programs by providing a robust and meaningful standard for further exploration of the causes of intra- and inter-institutional variation in the amount of unbiased authorship credit per dissertation.
合著论文集已成为自然科学和生物医学领域博士学位论文的新规范，但对于如何在博士研究生及其合著者之间分配作者署名权，尚无共识。博士项目的指导方针各不相同，但往往只规定了提交评估的论文数量的建议范围，有时还补充要求博士研究生在大多数提交的论文中担任第一作者。在此，我使用调和计数法来量化2008年来自两所斯堪的纳维亚大学的博士毕业生个人应得的实际作者署名权份额。调和计数法纠正了常规计数方法固有的膨胀和均衡偏差，从而能够以前所未有的准确性分析已批准论文中可通过文献计量学识别的作者署名权份额。在毕业生及其合著者之间公正地分配作者署名权，为当前的博士要求提供了一种事后的文献计量学衡量标准，并为这些当代博士的必要科研生产力设定了一个事实上的基线，即每篇论文约1.6篇未分割的论文的中值。与之前的普查数据相比，由于每位候选人提交的论文数量减少以及每篇论文合著者数量增加，基线在过去二十年中发生了变化。解决这种基线变化综合征的一个简单方法是，为成功完成特定博士项目所需的公正作者署名权份额设定基准，然后随着时间的推移监测与该水平的偏差。作者署名权的调和分配也有助于对不同博士项目的科研产出进行跨学科和跨机构分析。因此，将文献计量基准与当前基线并列，可能有助于为博士项目制定统一的指导方针和透明的跨国质量保证程序，为进一步探索各机构内部和机构之间每篇论文公正作者署名权份额差异的原因提供一个有力且有意义的标准。
