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It’s bad news for Z but A is AOK for authors listed alphabetically.<\/h6>\n
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PhotoAlto sas \/ Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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To keep authorship fair, journals in all fields should list authors based on their contribution rather than in alphabetical order.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the conclusion of Matthias Weber, an economist at the\u00a0University of St. Gallen<\/a>, who looked at 10 different studies examining the effects of alphabetical authorship in a literature review\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Research Evaluation<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Matthias Weber<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n The alphabetical ordering of names has been examined for its effect on career prospects, happiness and even life expectancy. In academia, name-ordering in authorship has long been a contentious issue. Weber\u2019s analysis suggests that in fields which continue to follow the convention of listing authors by alphabetical order, researchers with surnames beginning with letters early in the alphabet continue to derive advantage. And those whose names appear late in the alphabet may shy away from collaborations due to the lack of prominence their work is likely to receive.<\/p>\n Weber says that recognition and visibility play an important role in academic hiring decisions and promotion opportunities. If authors are listed based on their surname instead of their contribution, this can lead to alphabetical discrimination.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is unfair,\u201d says Weber. \u201cAs a society, we expect the best candidates to fill research positions, not people with a particular surname.\u201d<\/p>\n Oblivion in et.al.<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In papers with more than two authors, those with A-surnames are more visible because they are listed first, while authors whose surnames start late in the alphabet, listed last, can disappear when the first author is named and the rest are relegated to the abbreviation \u2018et al.\u2019.<\/p>\n “Studies show that scholars behave differently under an alphabetical norm than under a contribution-based norm. For instance, scholars late in the alphabet write papers on their best ideas alone more often than scholars earlier in the alphabet in fields where an alphabetical norm prevails. Scholars late in the alphabet are also less likely to collaborate with multiple others under an alphabetical norm,” writes Weber on the\u00a0LSE Impact Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n In most disciplines, the order of authors in journal articles is determined by their contribution to the research. But in fields such as high energy physics, where there are often\u00a0over a thousand authors on a research paper<\/a>, alphabetical listing is the norm.<\/p>\n According to Kevin Varvell, a high energy particle physicist at the\u00a0University of Sydney<\/a>, this alphabetical name ordering can create barriers for researchers when they apply for grants or jobs outside their field. In these scenarios, researchers are often evaluated by people in other disciplines which use contribution-based authorship.<\/p>\n \u201cEvaluators may apply metrics or prejudices from their own fields,\u201d says Varvell, who is a collaborator on the ATLAS Experiment at\u00a0CERN<\/a>. He says that when researchers in physics or maths don\u2019t get funding, they may wonder whether the evaluators have misunderstood the extent of their contributions due to the alphabetical authorship convention.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.natureindex.com\/news-blog\/image\/5b7bbca5f1738b7176354e60\/rsz_weber-4by5-low-resolution%20(2).jpg\")
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