%0 Journal Article
%T Authors' opinions on publication in relation to annual performance assessment
%A Robin L Walker
%A Lindsay Sykes
%A Brenda R Hemmelgarn
%A Hude Quan
%J BMC Medical Education
%D 2010
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1472-6920-10-21
%X Cross-sectional survey of corresponding authors of original research articles published in June 2007 among 72 medical journals. Measurement outcomes included the number of publications, number of authors, authorship order and journal impact factor in relation to performance review and promotion.Of 687 surveys, 478 were analyzed (response rate 69.6%). Corresponding authors self-reported that number of publications (78.7%), journal impact factor (67.8%) and being the first author (75.9%) were most influential for their annual performance review and assessment. Only 17.6% of authors reported that the number of authors on a manuscript was important criteria for performance review and assessment. A higher percentage of Asian authors reported that the number of authors was key to performance review and promotion (41.4% versus 7.8 to 22.2%). compared to authors from other countries.The number of publications, authorship order and journal impact factor were important factors for performance reviews and promotion at academic and non-academic institutes. The number of authors was not identified as important criteria. These factors may be contributing to the increase in the number of authors per publication.In the past fifty years there has been a substantial increase in the volume of published research. The number of papers cited by Pub Med each year has also grown linearly, to a current total exceeding 18 million [1]. The increase in publications has been accompanied by an increase in the number of authors per scientific publication [2-5]. In fact the average number of authors in major medical journals has increased from 4.5 in 1980 to 6.9 in 2000, and single authored articles have diminished [5,6]. For example, in January 2009 a manuscript was published with almost 3000 authors [7,8]. This increase has resulted in carefully defined criteria to be established by journal editors to define authorship requirements, with limitations on the number of authors established by some m
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6920/10/21