Giving credit where credit’s due: examination of coauthorship and impact in communication scholarship

Authorship patterns for 400 Communication scholars were collected and compared to productivity and other bibliometric measures. The analysis closely examined the use of a weighted fractional count (WFC) method that reduces an author’s contribution from 1.0 to a lower value based upon number of authors and authorship position. It was argued that full credit should be given to all authors and there are occasions when multiple authors are required for certain research projects with the potential for greater impact. The results indicated a positive relationship between the number of authors and a paper’s number of citations in Google Scholar, supporting the main hypothesis. An alternative explanation that self-citations might explain the number of authors and citation relationship was tested and unsupported. The rate of citations to one’s work was unrelated to productivity. A supplemental analysis replicated an earlier paper with respect to average WFC among a subsample of authors in the field and found WFC unrelated to productivity. Results are discussed and recommendations were advanced for how departments and review committees should use authorship patterns when evaluating authorship credit in Communication.