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

Purpose:This study aims to evaluate the accuracy of authorship attributions in scientific publications,focusing on the fairness and precision of individual contributions within academic works.Design/methodology/approach:The study analyzes 81,823 publications from the journal PLOS ONE,covering the period from January 2018 to June 2023.It examines the authorship attributions within these publications to try and determine the prevalence of inappropriate authorship.It also investigates the demographic and professional profiles of affected authors,exploring trends and potential factors contributing to inaccuracies in authorship.Findings:Surprisingly,9.14%of articles feature at least one author with inappropriate authorship,affecting over 14,000 individuals(2.56%of the sample).Inappropriate authorship is more concentrated in Asia,Africa,and specific European countries like Italy.Established researchers with significant publication records and those affiliated with companies or nonprofits show higher instances of potential monetary authorship.Research limitations:Our findings are based on contributions as declared by the authors,which implies a degree of trust in their transparency.However,this reliance on self-reporting may introduce biases or inaccuracies into the dataset.Further research could employ additional verification methods to enhance the reliability of the findings.Practical implications:These findings have significant implications for journal publishers,Beyond authorship:Analyzing contributions in PLOS ONE and Maddi,A.,&the challenges of appropriate attribution highlighting the necessity for robust control mechanisms to ensure the integrity of authorship attributions.Moreover,researchers must exercise discernment in determining when to acknowledge a contributor and when to include them in the author list.Addressing these issues is crucial for maintaining the credibility and fairness of academic publications.Originality/value:This study contributes to an understanding of critical issues within academic authorship,shedding light on the prevalence and impact of inappropriate authorship attributions.By calling for a nuanced approach to ensure accurate credit is given where it is due,the study underscores the importance of upholding ethical standards in scholarly publishing.

Guide for Authors

Introduction Types ofpaper Contributions falling into the following categories will be considered for publication:Reviews,Technical papers,Theoretical papers,and Editorial.Please ensure that you select the appropriate article type from the list of options when making your submission.Authors contributing to special issues should ensure that they select the special issue article type from this list.

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Chinese Phaysics Letters(CPL)is a peer-reviewed,inter-national and multidisciplinary journal sponsored by the Chi-nese Phaysical Society(CPS)and Institute of Physics,CAS,and hosted online by IOP Publishing Ltd.Launched in 1984 asthe flagship journal of CPS,CPL has become one of the mostprestigious periodicals published in China,and been among thegood choices for worldwide physicists to disseminate their mostimportant breakthroughs.

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Chinese Physics Letters(CPL)is a peer-reviewed,international and multidisciplinary journal sponsored by the Chinese Physical Society(CPS)and Institute of Physics,CAS,and hosted online by IOP Publishing Ltd.Launched in 1984 as the flagship journal of CPS,CPL has become one of the most prestigious periodicals published in China.

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General Journal of Beijing Institute of Technology(JBIT)is a periodical publication on science and technology published by Beijing Institute of Technology under the sponsorship of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China.JBIT was inaugurated in 1992.

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General Journal of Bejing Institute of Technology(JBIT)is a periodical publication on science andtechnology published by Beijing Institute of Technology under the sponsorship of the Ministry ofIndustry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China.JBIT was inaugurated in 1992.

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The Chinese Journal of Multiple Organ Diseases in the Elderly(Zhonghua Laonian Duoqiguan Jibing Zazhi)(ISSN 1671-5403)is launched in 2002 and published monthly by Chinese PLA General Hospital in Beijing,China.

High-speed Railway Guide for Authors

Types of paper Contributions falling into the following categories will be considered for publication:Original research papers,reviews,etc.Please ensure that you select the appropriate article type from the list of options when making your submission.Authors contributing to special issues should ensure that they select the special issue article type from this list.

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General Rules Journal of Polyphenols publishes research articles,reviews and short communications in English,on the fields of the science and technology of plant polyphenols.Cover Letters The journal requires a cover letter be included in submissions.A cover letter should explain why this topic is important,why these results are significant and what the novelty of this work is.

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General Rules Journal of Polyphenols publishes research articles,reviews and short communications in English,on the fields of the science and technology of plant polyphenols.Cover Letters The journal requires a cover letter be included in submissions.A cover letter should explain why this topic is important,why these results are significant and what the novelty of this work is.

Information for Authors

General Rules Journal of Polyphenols publishes research articles,reviews and short communications in English,on the fields of the science and technology of plant polyphenols.Cover Letters The journal requires a cover letter be included in submissions.A cover letter should explain why this topic is important,why these results are significant and what the novelty of this work is.

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Chinese Physics Letters(CPL)is a peer-reviewed,international and multidisciplinary journal sponsored by the Chinese Physical Society(CPS)and Institute of Physics,CAS,and hosted online by IOP Publishing Ltd.Launched in 1984 as the flagship journal of CPS.

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Applied Geophysics a ccepts original papers relating to all disciplines and a pplications of geophysics.All manuscripts are peer-reviewed by at least two referees and will not be processed further until favorable referees’reports are obtained.

INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS

Acta Oceanologica Sinica(AOS)is a comprehensive academic journal edited by the Editorial Committee of Acta Oceanologica Sinica and is designed to provide a forum for important research papers of the marine scientific community which reflect the information on a worldwide basis.

Information for Authors

Chinese Physics Letters(CPL)is a peer-reviewed,inter-national and multidisciplinary journal sponsored by the Chi-nese Physical Society(CPS)and Institute of Phyaics,CAS,and hosted online by IOP Publishing Ltd.Launched in 1984 as the flagship journal of CPS,CPL hias become one of the most prestigious periodicals published in China,and been among the good choices for worldwide physicists to disseminate their most important breakthroughs.

Guide for Authors

Introduction Types ofpaper Contributions falling into the following categories will be considered for publication:Reviews,Technical papers,Theoretical papers,and Editorial.Please ensure that you select the appropriate article type from the list of options when making your submission.Authors contributing to special issues should ensure that they select the special issue article type from this list.

Information for Authors Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Biomedcine

GENERAL.Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Biomedicine is sponsored by Hainan Medical University Journal Publisher,and aims to set up an acdemic communicating platform for scientists all over the world on tropical biomedicine and related sciences.

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1.Aims,The provision of low carbon energy to our society is a key issue at the heart of sustainable development of global energy supply.The Global Energy Interconnection(GEI)publishes original research on theories and developments as well practical applications on principles of large scale low carbon energy generation,transmission,distribution&storage technologies.

Peculiarities of gender disambiguation and ordering of non-English authors’names for Economic papers beyond core databases

Purpose:To supplement the quantitative portrait of Ukrainian Economics discipline with the results of gender and author ordering analysis at the level of individual authors,special methods of working with bibliographic data with a predominant share of non-English authors are used.The properties of gender mixing,the likelihood of male and female authors occupying the first position in the authorship list,as well as the arrangements of names are studied.Design/methodology/approach:A data set containing bibliographic records related to Ukrainian journal publications in the field of Economics is constructed using Crossref metadata.Partial semi-automatic disambiguation of authors’names is performed.First names,along with gender-specific ethnic surnames,are used for gender disambiguation required for further comparative gender analysis.Random reshuffling of data is used to determine the impact of gender correlations.To assess the level of alphabetization for our data set,both Latin and Cyrillic versions of names are taken into account.Findings:The lack of well-structured metadata and the poor use of digital identifiers lead to numerous problems with automatization of bibliographic data pre-processing,especially in the case of publications by non-Western authors.The described stages for working with such specific data help to work at the level of authors and analyse,in particular,gender issues.Despite the larger number of female authors,gender equality is more likely to be reported at the individual level for the discipline of Ukrainian Economics.The tendencies towards collaborative or solo-publications and gender mixing patterns are found to be dependent on the journal:the differences for publications indexed in Scopus and/or Web of Science databases are found.It has also been found that Ukrainian Economics research is characterized by rather a non-alphabetical order of authors.Research limitations:Only partial authors’name disambiguation is performed in a semi-automatic way.Gender labels can be derived only for authors declared by full First names or gender-specific Last names.Practical implications:The typical features of Ukrainian Economic discipline can be used to perform a comparison with other countries and disciplines,to develop an informed-based assessment procedure at the national level.The proposed way of processing publication data can be borrowed to enrich metadata about other research disciplines,especially for non-English speaking countries.Originality/value:To our knowledge,this is the first large-scale quantitative study of Ukrainian Economic discipline.The results obtained are valuable not only at the national level,but also contribute to general knowledge about Economic research,gender issues,and authors’names ordering.An example of the use of Crossref data is provided,while this data source is still less used due to a number of drawbacks.Here,for the first time,attention is drawn to the explicit use of the features of the Slavic authors’names.

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General Rules Journal of Polyphenols publishes research articles,reviews and short communications in English,on the fields of the science and technology of plant polyphenols.