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CRediT criteria based on whether they are sufficient on their own for authorship or not_
| Contributor role | Role definition | Authorship eligibility |
|---|---|---|
| Conceptualization | Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims. | Yes |
| Data Curation | Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse. | Yes |
| Formal Analysis | Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data. | Yes |
| Investigation | Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection. | Yes |
| Methodology | Development or design of methodology; creation of models | Yes |
| Software | Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components. | Yes |
| Validation | Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs. | Yes |
| Visualization | Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation. | Yes |
| Writing – Original Draft Preparation | Creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation). | Yes |
| Writing – Review & Editing | Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including pre- or post-publication stages. | Yes |
| Funding Acquisition | Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication. | No |
| Project Administration | Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution. | No |
| Resources | Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools. | No |
| Supervision | Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team. | No |
Number of DOI-based papers that fall into categories 1-3 of potential inappropriate authorship_
| Authorship type | Not meet authorship criteria | Potential authorship by resources | Potential APC ring | Count | # by type | % by type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Appropriate authorship | No | No | No | 74,346 | 74,346 | 90.86% |
| Yes | No | No | 4849 | |||
| No | Yes | No | 2008 | |||
| Inappropriate authorship | Yes | Yes | No | 585 | 7477 | 9.14% |
| No | No | Yes | 21 | |||
| Yes | No | Yes | 14 | |||
| Total | 81,823 | 81,823 | 100.00% |
Median total works count and citations number by author, by authorship type_
| Authorship type | Total works count by author (median) | Total number of citations received by author (median) |
|---|---|---|
| Potential APC ring | 104 | 1594 |
| Not meet authorship criteria | 91 | 1316 |
| Potential authorship by resources | 58 | 849 |
| Authorship meets the criteria defined by PLOS ONE | 38 | 481 |
Specialization index in inappropriate authorship by affiliation type_
| Affiliation type | Potential APC ring | Potential authorship by resources | Not meet authorship criteria |
|---|---|---|---|
| Other | 2.97 | 0.67 | 0.52 |
| Company | 2.06 | 1.54 | 0.99 |
| Nonprofit | 1.58 | 1.00 | 0.69 |
| Facility | 1.22 | 1.34 | 0.94 |
| Education | 1.01 | 0.87 | 0.99 |
| Healthcare | 0.98 | 1.20 | 1.18 |
| Unknown | 0.39 | 1.17 | 0.96 |
| Government | 0.00 | 1.17 | 1.05 |
| Archive | 0.00 | 1.16 | 0.48 |
Number of authors according to types of inappropriate authorship_
| Authorship type | # by type | # by group | % | % by group |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| APC ring | 46 | 0.01% | ||
| Authorship by resources | 5 087 | 14,022 | 0.93% | 2.56% |
| Not meet authorship criteria | 8 889 | 1.63% | ||
| Authorship meets the criteria defined by PLOS ONE | 532,858 | 532,858 | 97.44% | 97.44% |
| Total | 546,880 | 546,880 | 100.00% | 100.00% |