Number of Authors

What should be the limit on the number of authors to be put in any article ?

SM Kadri
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This is a tricky issue. From the authors' point of view, it is entirely their prerogative to decide who and how many are to be given authorship credits for a given article. At the same time, journals are also concerned about the increasing menace of guest authors.

We at Indian Pediatrics have a policy that limits number of authors in Brief communications (i.e., short research reports) (max. 5), Case Reports (max. 4) and Correspondence (max 2) and we have been able to adhere to it. This policy was arrived at after much discussion and analysis of our submission patterns and feedback from the readers/authors. There is no limit for number of authors to Original Research Papers. The authors have not complained and abide by the journal policy. Withdrawals from the publication process because of this restriction is limited to only 1-2 per year (of approx 800 submissions annually). We conducted a small study to see the impact of this policy. The results are available at http://www.indianpediatrics.net/jan2007/37.pdf along with a brief review of the literature. However it may not be feasible to have a uniform policy for all journals. It needs to be individualized to the journal, category of the article, and the authorship pattern.

Piyush Gupta
Editor-in-Chief, Indian Pediatrics
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This is my tuppenceworth on the issue:

"It is not clear whether the increase in the number of authors can be attributed to an increase in the number of scientists being active in research or whether the inclusion of senior scientists as an author is due to the laboratory hierarchy, in other words whether a senior author has been ’gifted’ authorship solely due to their position". http://journalology.blogspot.com/2007/07/not-being-clear-about-authorship-is.html

"Research is changing; hence authorship also needs to change. Increasing division of labour and multi-institutional projects in recent years challenge how to list authors and who takes overall credit. Given the virtually unlimited availability of space on the internet, and the increasingly acceptable idea of transparency in public life, we do not see why an article cannot have hundreds of authors, each with their contribution statements and conflicts of interest published as part of an article. The aim should be to accurately and fully convey who deserves credit and why, and who has responsibility for the integrity of the work".
http://www.nmji.in/archives/Volume_20_2_March_April/editorial/Editorial_2.htm

Matt Hodgkinson
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To add another pence, Weeks et al investigated 4 prestigious American medical journals that required authors to justify their inclusion as authors if the number of authors exceeded their author limit. They found that nevertheless the number of authors exceeded the limit in about half of the published articles. The journals were easily persuaded to allow more authors to be listed.

See: Weeks WB, Wallace AE, Surott Kimberly BC. Changes in authorship patterns in prestigious US medical journals. Social Science & Medicine 2004 59:1949-54. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VBF-4C603XN-3&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=a8cba4c686151e863aad27e3d763c2ad

Elise Langdon-Neuner
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Re: "Weeks et al investigated 4 prestigious American medical journals that required authors to justify their inclusion as authors if the number of authors exceeded their author limit" I think that's a flawed approach. Authors should all be asked to justify their inclusion, regardless of how many there are. If there are only two authors' names on a paper and one of them made no contribution, that's gift publication, and unacceptable.

But of course, even if you ask all authors to list their contributions (as we do), there's nothing to stop them lying. I think we had a lengthy interchange about this quite recently on this forum.

Bob Bury
Clinical Radiology