poster
Numbers and Trends in Authorship of Published Case Reports in Plastic Surgery Journals, 1956-2018
keywords:
and scientometrics
informatics
ethics and ethical concerns
authorship and contributorship
bibliometrics
Background Although some studies reporting authorship
proliferation in plastic surgery exist,1 there are no studies
about case reports. Moreover, most studies report only 1 or 2
journals. The aim of this study was to investigate the
evolution of authorship in MEDLINE-indexed case reports
published in the majority of plastic surgery journals over
time.
Design A list of the top plastic surgery journals according to
the Scimago Journal & Country Rank2 was made. Excluded
were journals that do not consider case reports, journals that
limit the number of authors, and wound journals owing to the
broad spectrum of specialties publishing in these journals.
Case reports published in journals that later stopped
considering case reports were included. Each journal was
separately searched and filtered in PubMed for case reports
published between 1956 and 2018.
Results A total of 13,960 case reports published in 14 plastic
surgery journals between 1956 and 2018 were analyzed. The
number of case reports published reached its peak in 2009,
and this number has been decreasing since 2010. The overall
percentage of case reports among all manuscripts published
was 22%, ranging from 3% (in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery)
to 48% (in Ophthalmic Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery).
The mean (SD) number of authors was 3.4 (1.7). The mean
number of authors per manuscript increased from 1.3 in 1956
to 2.6 in 1990 and 4.2 in 2018 (Figure 16). The most
common number of authors was 3 (found in 25% of case
reports), followed by 2 (21%). Overall, 87% of the case reports
had between 1 and 5 authors, whereas only 0.2% had 11 or
more authors. One case report had 20 authors and another
one had 19 authors, whereas no case report with 16 to 18
authors was found.
Conclusions Plastic surgery remains a field in which case
reports are published frequently (22% overall), although
there has been a decreasing trend during the last 10 years.
The trend of authorship proliferation reported in original
articles submitted in plastic surgery journals is also observed
in case reports, with a current mean number of 4.2 authors
per article. However, the increase is not as extreme as in
other fields.3
References
1. Durani P, Rimouche S, Ross G. “How many plastic
surgeons does it take to write a research article?” authorship
proliferation in and internationalisation of the plastic surgery
literature. J Plast Reconstr Aesthet Surg. 2007;60(8):956-
957. doi:10.1016/j.bjps.2006.08.002
2. Scimago Lab. Scimago Journal & Country Rank. Accessed
July 11, 2022. https://www.scimagojr.com/
3. Papadakis M. How many scientists does it take to write a
COVID-19 case report? Account Res. 2021;28(3):186-190. doi
:10.1080/08989621.2020.1821369
Conflict of Interest Disclosures None reported.