Evaluating Authorship Variation Patterns in English-Medium Astrophysics Research Papers: An Across Journal and Diachronic Study (1998-2012)

Abstract

This paper explores authorship practices from a diachronic perspective in a corpus of 300 randomly selected research papers published in the most prestigious Astrophysics Englishmedium journals. Our main results show that 21 variants were recorded in the numberof authors in the whole sample and that multi-authored research papers far outnumber single-authored ones. They also reveal a growth not only in the number of authors, but also in the number of multi-authored research papers over time, mainly in those contributed by more than seven authors. From a specific diachronic perspective, each journal has its own authorship variation patterns and variants, which are analysed and explained in relation to their specific scope and to the socio-economic and political situation in each geographic context (European countries and the USA).