Joint first authorship

Authorship of a scientific paper is a primary vehicle for signalling academic achievement. Research scientists seeking appointment, promotion, tenure or grant funding – or who are being nominated for a research award – will have list their publications front and foremost on their curriculum vitae. This is one of a number of factors that has led to the growing trend of including a large number of authors on scientific papers. The most exaggerated example of this is a 2015 paper by Aad et al.¹ in the journal Physical Review Letters that listed 5,154 authors in alphabetic order by surname.² In this paper, 24 of the 33 pages list the authors and institutions. As an aside, this is one reason why only a maximum of three authors, followed by ‘et al’, is allowed for each paper cited at the end articles published in Clinical and Experimental Optometry, and many other journals adopt a similar policy.

Putting aside journals that list authors alphabetically, authorship order is widely considered central when assessing the achievement and impact of individual researchers. The first-listed author on a scientific paper is generally viewed as having made the most significant contribution to the work, with the last-listed author being the most senior member of the team. This notion prompted Ioannidis et al.³ to develop a science-wide author database using standardised citation metrics, which adopts a sophisticated mathematical model that gives weightings to cited works in favour of first, single or last authorship. Nichols et al.⁴ used this database to construct a rank-order listing of the most impactful research optometrists in the world.

Guidelines are available that set criteria for being included as an author of a scientific paper. For example, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors recommends that authorship be based on the following four criteria: (1) substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; and (2) drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (3) final approval of the version to be published; and (4) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.⁵ However, such guidelines fail to address the question of author order or seniority on a paper.

Various strategies have been adopted by a number of journals in an attempt to obviate reliance on authorship order to denote the importance of the contributions of individual authors on a given paper. One approach is to list, at the end of the paper, the contributions of each author according to the ICMJE guidelines outlined above.

A relatively recent approach to signalling the most important authors is for two authors of a multi-authored paper to designate themselves as ‘joint first authors’. This concept is being adopted by an increasing number of journals, including Clinical and Experimental Optometry; however, the designation of joint first authorship raises a number of issues, which are discussed below.

Arguments for joint first authorship

Advancement in the academic world can be supported by demonstrating a higher number or proportion of first-authorship papers, as this signifies a higher level of achievement. First authorship is generally assigned to more senior members of a research team, thereby precluding early career researchers, who are often junior partners in a research team, from securing the coveted first authorship position. Assigning joint first authorship to an early career researcher who has made an especially important contribution to a research project – but who has not necessarily led the work – can provided great encouragement and enhance prospects of career advancement for to that researcher.

Sometimes the most ‘important’ author of a paper may not be obvious, resulting in disagreement among the authors as to who should be designated first author. Nominating joint first authorship is one way of amicably resolving such disagreements.

Joint first authorship may be justified in the case of a small team of two authors who have collaborated extensively on a research project on a truly shared basis. This case for joint first authorship would be even more compelling if the two authors were also joint principal investigators on a grant application that was successful, thus providing funding for the project being reported.

Arguments against joint first authorship

In some respect, joint first authorship is an artificial construct. After deciding that there will be joint first authors on a paper, there must be some way of designating this. One approach is to set in bold font the names of these two joint first authors (with the remaining author names set in plain font). Alternatively, the two ‘joint first authors’ might have an asterisk placed after each of their names, and a footnote to specify that joint first authorship is being claimed. However, either way, there is no escaping having to list these authors one after the other. Many readers – especially those who do not notice the footnote – will consider the first-listed ‘joint first author’ as having made the most important contribution to the paper.

The concept of joint first authorship runs the risk of spiralling out of control. If joint first authorship is acceptable, then the same arguments could be advanced to justify having three joint first authors. Where might this end? Some could argue that all 20 authors of a paper deserve joint first authorship, which would make a mockery of the time-honoured tradition of designating the first author as the most important contributor to a scientific paper.

From a bibliometrics perspective, there is currently no satisfactory, universally agreed method for signalling joint first authorship. Search engines analyse data based on author position within the list of authors. For example, the Web of Science database (Clarivate) has a field in the author search platform that provides the percentage of first, last and corresponding authorship designations of all the papers published by that individual. However, clicking on the ‘information’ button in this field reveals this message: “We only count one person as first/last author on a paper; for papers published as joint first author, we select the person listed first in the metadata”. Thus, at the present time, if a bibliometric analysis of the authorship positions on all papers attributed to a given author needs to be conducted, which takes into account ‘joint first author’ designations, this would need to be performed manually, which would be tedious and time-consuming, especially if the author has been prolific.

Another consideration is that a bibliometric analysis of an individual based on authorship position should be transparent, whereby the following counts are specified – first authorship, joint first authorship, last authorship and sole authorship. If this approach were to be adopted, some might be minded to assign various weightings to these different categories of authorship; for example, a 50% weighting might be applied to joint first authorships …. but of course, applying such a weighting would defeat the purpose of designating joint first authorship in the first place.

There are other ways of providing equitable attribution to authors who deserve equal acknowledgement. One way is to alternate first authorship over the course of a long-term research project that is generating multiple papers. For example, two researchers may be taking an equal lead among a large research group undertaking such work. Rather than assign joint first authorship on every paper, first authorship can be alternated as papers emerge, eventually leading to a balanced distribution of first authorship papers over time.

Conclusions

Throughout my 46-year academic career, during which I have published 444 papers (according to Scopus [Elsevier]) – I have rarely had any uncertainty or disagreement as to the inclusion or order of authors. For example, I have been undertaking ongoing survey work on international contact lens prescribing trends with Professor Philip Morgan at the University of Manchester, UK (assisted by a large international consortium of colleagues who have largely collected data) that has resulted a total of 101 refereed papers and clinical articles. First authorship on this truly joint and equal research partnership has simply been alternated. For all other collaborative research projects in which I have participated, the authorship arrangements have always seemed obvious and have been decided amicably; however, it seems that this is not always the case for to the broader research community, especially those who seek joint first authorship.

The editorial board of Clinical and Experimental Optometry has discussed the issue of joint first authorship, with the majority opinion being that this is approach has merit. Thus, despite personal reservations, this journal shall, for the time being, continue to offer joint first authorship to those who request it. This approach may be revised should a universally agreed consensus regarding authorship designation emerge in the future.