LAUSR

To curb the issue of allocating the same credit to all co-authors of any multi-author paper, it has been proposed to give the greater credit share to the first author and lesser shares to the co-authors, depending on their contribution and position in the byline.5 Moreover, Shen and Barabási6 developed an algorithm that attempts to quantify the credit share of co-authors. Consistent with this idea, a recent study of more than 12,000 articles in the biological and life sciences confirms that 1st authors declare more contributions (3.77) than last (3.03) and middle (1.80–2.50) co-authors.7 Also, it has been documented that middle authors of papers with numerous co-authors are less likely to become principal investigators unless they publish in journals with a high-impact factor.8