Rising number of paper authors ‘distorts’ analysis of citations

Articles with over 100 authors or authors from over 30 countries produce erratic citations results

Research articles authored by multiple authors and by authors from many countries can lead to skewed citation rates, according to a new analysis.

A report published by the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate Analytics on 4 December finds a growing number of research articles with dozens, even hundreds of authors from dozens of countries. “The combination of many authors/many countries creates a complex authorship pattern that differs from more typical academic papers and drives elevated citation rates,” it says.