Author sequence and credit for contributions in multiauthored publications. PLoS Biol. 2007, 5, doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050018. © 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI

The increasing tendency across scientifi c disciplines to write multiauthored papers [1,2] makes the issue of the sequence of contributors ’ names a major topic both in terms of refl ecting actual contributions and in a posteriori assessments by evaluation committees. Traditionally, the fi rst author contributes most and also receives most of the credit, whereas the position of subsequent authors is usually decided by contribution, alphabetical order, or reverse seniority. Ranking the fi rst or second author in a two-author paper is straightforward, but the meaning of position becomes increasingly arbitrary as the number of authors increases beyond two. Criteria for authorship have been discussed at length, because of the infl ationary increase in the number of authors on papers submitted to biomedical journals and the practice of “gift ” authorship [3,4], but a simple way to determine credit associated with the sequence of authors ’ names is still missing [4–7