Author placement in Computer Science: a study based on the careers of ACM Fellows

João M. Fernandes (), António Costa () and Paulo Cortez ()
Additional contact information
João M. Fernandes: University of Minho
António Costa: University of Minho
Paulo Cortez: University of Minho

Scientometrics, 2022, vol. 127, issue 1, No 14, 368 pages

Abstract: Abstract The order in which authors of a scientific paper place their names on the byline follows in many research fields some implicit rules. In most fields, the first author is considered to be the one who contributed most to the intellectual effort described in the paper. Additionally, the last author is normally the most senior researcher and in many situations the contribution to the paper is more indirect. In this manuscript, we intend to analyse the evolution of the positions of computer science (CS) researchers on the bylines of scientific papers throughout their careers. In particular, this bibliometic study considers the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Fellows (the most prestigious members) that present a long and rich publication record. Our hypothesis is that young CS authors tend to have their names placed in the first positions of the bylines, while senior CS researchers are often considered as last authors. Several statistical analyses were conducted by using biblometric data collected from ACM Fellows and other CS researchers. Overall, the obtained results do confirm our initial hypothesis.

Keywords: Bibliometrics; Scientific authorship; Authors order; Scholarly publication (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-021-04035-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:127:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-021-04035-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-021-04035-5

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().