Acknowledgements are not just thank you notes: A qualitative analysis of acknowledgements content in scientific articles and reviews published in 2015

Interdisciplinarity in cultural gerontology and geriatric medical humanities - a bibliometric survey

BACKGROUND

Cultural gerontology - understanding ageing through the lens of arts and humanities-has emerged as an important element of epistemology of ageing. As a boundary area between geriatric medicine/gerontology and arts/humanities disciplines, joint-working/interdisciplinarity is desirable. This project aims to assess the degree of joint-working manifested in cultural gerontology by authorship and acknowledgements in papers dedicated to cultural gerontology in five journals.

METHODS

Observational survey of authorship in 5 journals from the founding of the specific sections on cultural gerontology or specific dedicated journals, assessing number of authors, disciplinary identities, and evidence of joint working within cultural gerontology.

RESULTS

Of 591 papers, 481 (81%) were single authors. There was a spread of disciplinary affiliations, 247 (41.8%) gerontology/age studies, 169 arts/humanities/social sciences (28.6%) and 133 of uncertain affiliation (22.5%): only 38 papers had a clear indication of joint working across the disciplines (6.4%). In the two geriatric medicine journals, European Geriatric Medicine and Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, authorship was almost exclusively from geriatric medicine/gerontology. There was extremely limited use of acknowledgements.

CONCLUSION

Our study indicates that single authorship is the most frequent mode of peer-reviewed publishing in cultural gerontology, whilst acknowledging that some authors may have scholarly training in multiple fields but are listed as unidisciplinary. Leaders in the field and editors of relevant journals/section need to consider ways of encouraging and recognising joint working, through fuller descriptions of multiple affiliations, brief author biographies, fuller use of acknowledgements and consideration of brief accompanying discussant responses from complementary disciplines.

Analysis of the ethical issues in authorship of collaborative research. Observations inspired by the historical case study of Gerard L. Blaes' (Blasius) claim to sole authorship of 'Anatome medullae spinalis'

This paper discusses the historical context of collaborative research and authorship disputes, exemplified by the complex relationship between Dutch anatomist and physician Gerard L. Blaes and his East-Central European mentee, Daniel Gödtke, during the study of medulla spinalis. The study employs historical analysis to unravel the dynamics of scholarly collaboration, emphasizing the significance of mentorship in scientific progress and the communal nature of knowledge exchange. This historical analysis is based on primary sources and historical records. It underscores Blaes's strategy to circumvent public confrontations regarding the authorship of the seminal work 'Anatome medullae spinalis, et nervorum inde provenientium' (1666). As a teacher, he facilitated his student's participation in a public disputation to avert public authorship conflicts over the book. This ultimately led to the publication of two distinct versions of 'Anatome medullae spinalis.' The first one was co-authored by the mentor and his mentee, while the latter was solely attributed to the mentor. This historical narrative raises essential questions about attributing individual contributions in medical sciences, echoing concerns still pertinent in contemporary academia. Additionally, it makes visible the power dynamics inherent in faculty-students relationships and the potential repercussions of authorship disputes on scholars' reputations. By drawing parallels between historical and modern authorship dilemmas, this study contributes to ongoing discussions on equitable authorship in scientific research and publishing. It not only highlights a historical precedent for the complex dynamics of mentor-mentee collaborations and authorship disputes but also illuminates how these practices continue to influence contemporary academic and publishing customs.

Publishers' and journals' instructions to authors on use of generative artificial intelligence in academic and scientific publishing: bibliometric analysis

OBJECTIVES

To determine the extent and content of academic publishers' and scientific journals' guidance for authors on the use of generative artificial intelligence (GAI).

DESIGN

Cross sectional, bibliometric study.

SETTING

Websites of academic publishers and scientific journals, screened on 19-20 May 2023, with the search updated on 8-9 October 2023.

PARTICIPANTS

Top 100 largest academic publishers and top 100 highly ranked scientific journals, regardless of subject, language, or country of origin. Publishers were identified by the total number of journals in their portfolio, and journals were identified through the Scimago journal rank using the Hirsch index (H index) as an indicator of journal productivity and impact.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

The primary outcomes were the content of GAI guidelines listed on the websites of the top 100 academic publishers and scientific journals, and the consistency of guidance between the publishers and their affiliated journals.

RESULTS

Among the top 100 largest publishers, 24% provided guidance on the use of GAI, of which 15 (63%) were among the top 25 publishers. Among the top 100 highly ranked journals, 87% provided guidance on GAI. Of the publishers and journals with guidelines, the inclusion of GAI as an author was prohibited in 96% and 98%, respectively. Only one journal (1%) explicitly prohibited the use of GAI in the generation of a manuscript, and two (8%) publishers and 19 (22%) journals indicated that their guidelines exclusively applied to the writing process. When disclosing the use of GAI, 75% of publishers and 43% of journals included specific disclosure criteria. Where to disclose the use of GAI varied, including in the methods or acknowledgments, in the cover letter, or in a new section. Variability was also found in how to access GAI guidelines shared between journals and publishers. GAI guidelines in 12 journals directly conflicted with those developed by the publishers. The guidelines developed by top medical journals were broadly similar to those of academic journals.

CONCLUSIONS

Guidelines by some top publishers and journals on the use of GAI by authors are lacking. Among those that provided guidelines, the allowable uses of GAI and how it should be disclosed varied substantially, with this heterogeneity persisting in some instances among affiliated publishers and journals. Lack of standardization places a burden on authors and could limit the effectiveness of the regulations. As GAI continues to grow in popularity, standardized guidelines to protect the integrity of scientific output are needed.

A comprehensive analysis of acknowledgement texts in Web of Science: a case study on four scientific domains

Analysis of acknowledgments is particularly interesting as acknowledgments may give information not only about funding, but they are also able to reveal hidden contributions to authorship and the researcher’s collaboration patterns, context in which research was conducted, and specific aspects of the academic work. The focus of the present research is the analysis of a large sample of acknowledgement texts indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection. Record types “article” and “review” from four different scientific domains, namely social sciences, economics, oceanography and computer science, published from 2014 to 2019 in a scientific journal in English were considered. Six types of acknowledged entities, i.e., funding agency, grant number, individuals, university, corporation and miscellaneous, were extracted from the acknowledgement texts using a named entity recognition tagger and subsequently examined. A general analysis of the acknowledgement texts showed that indexing of funding information in WoS is incomplete. The analysis of the automatically extracted entities revealed differences and distinct patterns in the distribution of acknowledged entities of different types between different scientific domains. A strong association was found between acknowledged entity and scientific domain, and acknowledged entity and entity type. Only negligible correlation was found between the number of citations and the number of acknowledged entities. Generally, the number of words in the acknowledgement texts positively correlates with the number of acknowledged funding organizations, universities, individuals and miscellaneous entities. At the same time, acknowledgement texts with the larger number of sentences have more acknowledged individuals and miscellaneous categories.

Dataset of identified scholars mentioned in acknowledgement statements

Acknowledgements represent scholars' relationships as part of the research contribution. While co-authors and citations are often provided as a well-formatted bibliometric database, acknowledged individuals are difficult to identify because they appear as part of the statements in the paper. We identify acknowledged scholars who appeared in papers published in open-access journals by referring to the co-author and citation relationships stored in the Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG). Therefore, the constructed dataset is compatible with MAG, which accelerates and expands the acknowledgements as a data source of scholarly relationships similar to collaboration and citation analysis. Moreover, the implemented code is publicly available; thus, it can be applied in other studies.

Taking histories: joint working of disciplines in medical history scholarship

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

While there is an increasing emphasis on the value of interdisciplinarity in scholarship in the medical humanities, it is unknown to what extent there is joint working between historians and clinicians in medical history. We aimed to quantify evidence of joint working in authorship of medical history papers.

METHODS

Observational survey of authorship. We studied authorship data in all papers published in the three major medical history journals between 2009 and 2019 (n = 634).

RESULTS

The majority of medical history papers is written by single authors with single disciplinary affiliations (68%), most commonly history (65%): fewer than one paper in seven (14%) shows evidence of joint working between disciplines in authorship. A minority of papers (8%) are written by authors with primary medical affiliations. Almost three-quarters (71%) of papers have an acknowledgements section, but only 6% shows clear evidence of joint working between disciplines in the acknowledgements.

CONCLUSIONS

Scholarship engaging both historians and clinicians is rare in medical history journals. Possible solutions include enhanced research collaborations between historians and clinicians, interdisciplinary educational seminars and cross-institutional knowledge exchanges.

A brief guide to the science and art of writing manuscripts in biomedicine

Publishing articles in international scientific journals is the primary method for the communication of validated research findings and ideas. Journal articles are commonly used as a major input for evaluations of researchers and institutions. Few articles have been published previously about the different aspects needed for writing high-quality articles. In this manuscript, we provide an updated and brief guide for the multiple dimensions needed for writing manuscripts in the health and biological sciences, from current, international and interdisciplinary perspectives and from our expertise as authors, peer reviewers and editors. We provide key suggestions for writing major sections of the manuscript (e.g. title, abstract, introduction, methods, results and discussion), for submitting the manuscript and bring an overview of the peer review process and  of the post-publication impact of the articles.

Acknowledgment of Libraries in the Journal Literature: An Exploratory Study

Purpose

This study examines acknowledgments to libraries in the journal literature, as well as the efficacy of using Web of Science (WoS) to locate general acknowledgment text.

Design/methodology/approach

This mixed-methods approach quantifies and characterizes acknowledgments to libraries in the journal literature. Using WoS's Funding Text field, the acknowledgments for six peer universities were identified and then characterized. The efficacy of using WoS to locate library acknowledgments was assessed by comparing the WoS Funding Text search results to the actual acknowledgment text found in the articles.

Findings

Acknowledgments to libraries were found in articles at all six peer universities, though the absolute and relative numbers were quite low (< 0.5%). Most of the library acknowledgments were for resources (collections, funding, etc.), and many were concentrated in natural history (e.g. zoology). Examination of Texas A&M University zoology articles found that 91.7% of the funding information came from “acknowledgments” and not specifically a funding acknowledgment section. The WoS Funding Text search found 56% of the library acknowledgments compared to a search of the actual acknowledgment text in the articles.

Research limitations

Limiting publications to journals, using a single truncated search term, and including only six research universities in the United States.

Practical implications

This study examined library acknowledgments, but the same approach could be applied to searches of other keywords, institutions/organizations, individuals, etc. While not specifically designed to search general acknowledgments, WoS's Funding Text field can be used as an exploratory tool to search acknowledgments beyond funding.

Originality/value

There are a few studies that have examined library acknowledgments in the scholarly literature, though to date none of those studies have examined the efficacy of using the WoS Funding Text field to locate those library acknowledgments within the journal literature.