How many scientists does it take to write a COVID-19 case report?

ABSTRACT

Aim of this work is to explore authorship patterns in COVID-19 case reports. As of August 2020, i.e. 6 months after the first COVID-19 publication was released, more than 40000 articles have been published in Medline, the 1552 being indexed as case reports (COVID Group). During the same period, a Medline search for case reports about infectious diseases excluding COVID-19 (ID Group), identified 496 publications. The two groups were compared in terms of authorship. COVID-19 case reports had a mean of 6.1 authors per manuscript (median 5, SD 3.8), compared to 6.2 (median 5, SD 3.3) in the other group (p = .43). The COVID-19 group had 51 cases (3.3%) authored from 15 or more authors, compared to 1.4% (7 cases) in the ID group (p = .03). Fourteen percent of all COVID-19 case reports have 10 or more authors and 13 manuscripts (1%) have been authored by 20 or more persons. We conclude that COVID-19 case reports reflect the modern trend of authorship proliferation with two-page case reports being authored from >15 scientists.

KEYWORDS:

• Authorship
• COVID-19
• case report
• medical publication
• ICMJE guidelines

Acknowledgments

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Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was received for this manuscript.