Scientific Contribution List Categories Investigation: a comparison between three mainstream medical journals

Edson Melo Souza (), Jose Eduardo Storopoli () and Wonder Alexandre Luz Alves ()
Additional contact information
Edson Melo Souza: Universidade Nove de Julho
Jose Eduardo Storopoli: Universidade Nove de Julho
Wonder Alexandre Luz Alves: Universidade Nove de Julho

Scientometrics, 2022, vol. 127, issue 5, No 6, 2249-2276

Abstract: Abstract How can we represent scientific contributions in articles through categories? The scientific contributions’ identification in articles is relevant with regard to issues such as authorship credit, transparency, and responsibility. The major medical journals have adopted the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) to indicate the contributions in publications. However, the nomenclature of these contributions is different for each one, making it difficult to identify them when compared between journals. We analyze contributions list from 2024 articles with 20,098 authors, published in three mainstream medical journals: Annals of Internal Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, and PLoS Medicine. This study presents two main findings. First, a system grouping scientific contributions with seven categories divided into two groups: (1) Theory; and (2) Methodology and Logistics. Theory is composed of the following contributions: Study Concept, Study Supervision, Critical Revision and Funding and/or Support. While Methodology and Logistics have: Original Draft, Statistical Analysis, and Data Collection. Second, the major contributions are related to the categories related to the theoretical (Theory) argument of the articles, showing that these authors are the most experienced. Already Methodology and Logistics are essential to the application of theoretical concepts and support, representing substantial contributions. Thus, the grouping of the proposed categories can help authors to identify and indicate their contributions in articles more clearly, balancing the ethical issues related to the attribution of authorship to researchers. We also present a equivalence table to contribution categories between the three journals analyzed in this study.

Keywords: Scientific contributions; Contributions categories; Contribution list; Author contribution; Authorship; ICMJE (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-022-04315-8 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:5:d:10.1007_s11192-022-04315-8

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

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-022-04315-8

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 ().