CSE Recommendations for Group-Author Articles in Scientific Journals and Bibliometric Databases

The number of articles involving large numbers of investigators working under a single group name has been increasing in the sciences, especially in some of the life sciences. Such articles are known as collaborative, corporate, collective, or group-author articles. Group-author articles involve the following parties: the overall group, members of the group who take responsibility for authorship of the article (named individual authors), and members of the group who do not take responsibility for authorship of the article but have contributed to the work that led to the article (nonauthor group members). The absence of a standard format for citation of group-author articles leads to difficulty in the location of such articles in bibliographic databases and has resulted in citation errors and miscalculated citation statistics.1-4

To help to solve those problems, CSE recommends the following:

For Journals and Publishers

  • Journals and publishers should ask authors to identify both the group name and the named individual authors who accept responsibility for the article.5,6
  • Journals and publishers should clearly identify in the published article named individual authors (preferably by full names, but last names and initials are acceptable) and the complete name of the group.
  • Journals and publishers should distinguish named individual authors from other group members. If they are identified, journals should list other nonauthor group members in the acknowledgments section.
  • Journals and publishers should code or format (with markup language to indicate print and online publication and display) the names of individual authors and the group name for easy identification in print and online versions of the published article and by bibliographic databases.
  • Each group-author article should clearly indicate a suggested citation (for example, at the end of the article or with but separate from the abstract). See below for examples of citation formats. A suggested citation is not intended to dictate reference and citation styles for all journals or bibliographic databases; it is intended to provide the essential elements of a group-author citation in a manner that is at least consistent within a specific journal.
  • Search results on journal Web sites should display citations to group-author articles, in addition to relevant individual-author information, in a consistent manner.

For Bibliographic Databases

  • Bibliographic databases should enable users to retrieve citations to original articles by searching for the group name or the individual author names.
  • Bibliographic databases should display the group name and the names of the individual authors in the citation or other bibliographic record (such as the abstract page or record with other bibliographic details beyond the citation) or both.
  • A limit should not be placed on the number of named authors that can be displayed in a citation.
  • Author fields in bibliographic databases should not have character limits that prohibit proper searching by the name of any named individual author or the complete group name.
  • A group-author name should be displayed in bibliographic database citations as it appears in the original journal article byline, should not be abbreviated if originally spelled out, and should not be expanded if originally abbreviated or published as an initialism. Removal of initial articles (a, an, and the) and connectors (such as and and for) may be permitted.
  • Bibliographic databases should not list author fields in citations to group-author articles as anonymous or no authors listed.

Examples of Bylines and Citations

These examples are provided as suggestions to ensure that all elements necessary for accurate and complete citations to and retrieval of group-author articles are included in the original articles, references to the articles, and bibliographic-database citations and records and to allow flexibility for authors, editors, publishers, and bibliographic-database managers and indexers.

  1. The byline contains the names of individual authors and the name of the group. Use of the connector and indicates that there are other individual authors who are not named in the byline but are members of the group and are listed somewhere else in the article.Byline: Author 1, Author 2, Author 3; and the Group-Author NameCitation: Author 1, Author 2, Author 3; and the Group-Author Name. Article Title. Journal. Year;Volume:Page Numbers.

    Byline: Steven Q Smith, MD, Yoko Suzuki, MD, J T Mann, PhD, Klaus T Schulze, MD, Christine DeAngelo, MD, Charles Davis, MD, PhD, Katherine J Jones, MD; and the Generic Coalition GroupCitation: Smith SQ, Suzuki Y, Mann JT, Schulze KT, DeAngelo C, Davis C, Jones KJ; and the Generic Coalition Group. A randomized trial of chemoradiotherapy of esophageal cancer. J Onc Dis. 2004;183:1763-70.

    Example of bibliographic-database citation from US National Library of Medicine: Smith SQ, Suzuki Y, Mann JT, Schulze KT, DeAngelo C, Davis C, Jones KJ, Cunningham TL, Snyder MJ, Gutierrez AM; and the Generic Coalition Group. A randomized trial of chemoradiotherapy of esophageal cancer. J Onc Dis. 2004;183:1763-1770.

    Note: Some may prefer to replace the connector and in the citation above with a semicolon and delete the initial article the:

    Citation: Smith SQ, Suzuki Y, Mann JT, Schulze KT, DeAngelo C, Davis C, Jones KJ; Generic Coalition Group. A randomized trial of chemoradiotherapy of esophageal cancer. J Onc Dis. 2004;183:1763-70.Example of bibliographic-database citation from US National Library of Medicine: Smith SQ, Suzuki Y, Mann JT, Schulze KT, DeAngelo C, Davis C, Jones KJ, Cunningham TL, Snyder MJ, Gutierrez AM; Generic Coalition Group. A randomized trial of chemoradiotherapy of esophageal cancer. J Onc Dis.2004;183:1763-1770.

  2. The byline contains the names of individual authors and the name of the group. Use of the connector for indicates that the authors in the byline represent the group, which includes others who are not authors and should not be included in citations. However, the nonauthor group members may be listed somewhere else in the article (form example, in the acknowledgment).Byline: Author 1, Author 2, Author 3; for the Group-Author NameCitation: Author 1, Author 2, Author 3; for the Group-Author Name. Article Title. Journal. Year;Volume:Page Numbers.

    Byline: Steven Q Smith, MD, Yoko Suzuki, MD, J T Mann, PhD, Klaus T Schulze, MD, Christine DeAngelo, MD, Charles Davis, MD, PhD, Katherine J Jones, MD; for the Generic Coalition GroupCitation: Smith SQ, Suzuki Y, Mann JT, Schulze KT, DeAngelo C, Davis C, Jones KJ; for the Generic Coalition Group. A randomized trial of chemoradiotherapy of esophageal cancer. J Onc Dis. 2004;183:1763-70.

    Example of bibliographic-database citation from US National Library of Medicine: Same as citation immediately above.

    Note: Some may prefer to replace the connector for in the citation above with a semicolon and delete the initial article the:

    Citation: Smith SQ, Suzuki Y, Mann JT, Schulze KT, DeAngelo C, Davis C, Jones KJ; Generic Coalition Group. A randomized trial of chemoradiotherapy of esophageal cancer. J Onc Dis. 2004;183:1763-70.

  3. The byline contains the group name but no named individual authors. All members of the group are authors, and each individual author is listed somewhere in the article. In this case, no members of the group are nonauthors.Byline: Group-Author NameCitation: Group-Author Name. Article Title. Journal. Year;Volume:Page Numbers.

    Byline: Generic Coalition GroupCitation: Generic Coalition Group. A randomized trial of chemoradiotherapy of esophageal cancer. J Onc Dis. 2004;183:1763-70.

    Example of bibliographic-database citation from US National Library of Medicine: Smith SQ, Suzuki Y, Mann JT, Schulze KT, DeAngelo C, Davis C, Jones KJ, Cunningham TL, Snyder MJ, Gutierrez AM; Generic Coalition Group. A randomized trial of chemoradiotherapy of esophageal cancer. J Onc Dis. 2004;183:1763-1770.

    Note: Bibliographic databases may include the named individual authors in their citations or otherwise allow for retrieval of citations by the names of the individual authors in addition to the group name.

  4. The byline contains the group name but no named individual authors. However, in contrast with example C, not all members of the group are authors. The asterisk in the byline refers to another asterisk (that appears elsewhere in the article) that precedes a list of the authors (that is, members of the group who take responsibility for the article).Byline: Group-Author Name*Citation: Group-Author Name. Article Title. Journal. Year;Volume:Page Numbers.

    Byline: Generic Coalition Group*Citation: Generic Coalition Group. A randomized trial of chemoradiotherapy of esophageal cancer. I>J Onc Dis. 2004;183:1763-70.

    Example of bibliographic-database citation from US National Library of Medicine: Smith SQ, Suzuki Y, Mann JT, Schulze KT, DeAngelo C, Davis C, Jones KJ; Generic Coalition Group. A randomized trial of chemoradiotherapy of esophageal cancer. J Onc Dis. 2004;183:1763-1770.

    Note: The asterisk has no meaning when separated from the byline and article and therefore is not needed in other listings of the article (such as the journal’s table of contents or citations to the article in other articles or bibliographic databases).

    Note: Bibliographic databases may include the named individual authors in their citations or otherwise allow for retrieval of citations by the names of the individual authors in addition to the group name.

Additional Notes:

In examples A and C, the names of authors who are members of the group should be identified as authors somewhere in the published article. For bibliographic databases, a search for any individually named author or for the group name should result in retrieval of a citation to the original article.

In example B, nonauthor members of a group should not be listed in the bibliographic-database citation or record.

In example C, all members of the group are authors and should be identified as authors in the published article so that bibliographic databases can include them, with the group name, in the citation or record or otherwise allow for retrieval of citations by the names of the individual authors in addition to the group name.

In example D, the named individual authors of the group should be properly identified in the article as authors so that bibliographic databases can include them, with the group name, in the citation or record or otherwise allow for retrieval of citations by the names of the individual authors in addition to the group name.

References

  1. Dickersin K, Scherer R, Suci EST, Gil-Montero M. Problems with indexing and citation of articles with group authorship. JAMA 2002;287:2772-4.
  2. Errors in citation statistics. Nature 2002;415:101.
  3. Cherfas J. With missing citations reported: Nature genome paper jumps. Sci Watch 2002;13:8.
  4. Flanagin A, Fontanarosa, PB, DeAngelis CD. Authorship for research groups. JAMA 2002;288:3166-8.
  5. Davidoff F and the Task Force on Authorship. Who’s the author? Problems with biomedical authorship, and some possible solutions. Report to the Council of Biology Editors (now Council of Science Editors). Science Editor 2000;23(4):111-9.
  6. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Uniform requirements for manuscripts: authorship. October 2001. Available at www.icmje.org. Accessed 27 June 2003.

This statement was initially drafted in June 2003 after a meeting attended by the following persons and was later revised and approved by the following in January 2005:

Annette Flanagin, JAMA
Peter Wrobel
Virginia Barbour, PLoS Medicine
Edward Campion, New England Journal of Medicine
Bridget Coughlin, PNAS
John Hoey, CMAJ
Katrina Kelner, Science
Sheldon Kotzin, US National Library of Medicine
Julia Noblitt, HighWire Press
Stephen Morrissey, New England Journal of Medicine

The CSE Editorial Policy Committee revised the statement and approved the January 2005 version referred to above on 14 November 2005. The CSE Board approved the statement on 28 January 2006.