Mining patterns of author orders in scientific publications

The author order of multi-authored papers can reveal subtle patterns of scientific collaboration and provide insights on the nature of credit assignment among coauthors. This article proposes a sequence-based perspective on scientific collaboration. Using frequently occurring sequences as the unit of analysis, this study explores (1) what types of sequence patterns are most common in the scientific collaboration at the level of authors, institutions, U.S. states, and nations in Library and Information Science (LIS); and (2) the productivity (measured by number of papers) and influence (measured by citation counts) of different types of sequence patterns. Results show that (1) the productivity and influence approximately follow the power law for frequent sequences in the four levels of analysis; (2) the productivity and influence present a significant positive correlation among frequent sequences, and the strength of the correlation increases with the level of integration; (3) for author-level, institution-level, and state-level frequent sequences, short geographical distances between the authors usually co-present with high productivities, while long distances tend to co-occur with large citation counts; (4) for author-level frequent sequences, the pattern of “the more productive and prestigious authors ranking ahead” is the one with the highest productivity and the highest influence; however, in the rest of the levels of analysis, the pattern with the highest productivity and the highest influence is the one with “the less productive and prestigious institutions/states/nations ranking ahead.”

► We propose a sequence-based perspective on the author lists of coauthored papers.
► We use frequently occurring sequences as the unit of analysis in four different levels.
► Close geographic locations usually co-present with high productivity.
► Distant locations tend to co-occur with high citation counts.
► The pattern “more productive and prestigious author ranking ahead” gains most citations.