# The elephant in the room: multi-authorship and the assessment of individual researchers

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1307.1330 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1307.1330/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 4 Jul 2013.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Researching Alignment Research: Unsupervised Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.02841/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

When a group of individuals creates something, credit is usually divided among them. Oddly, that does not apply to scientific papers. The most commonly used performance measure for individual researchers is the h-index, which does not correct for multi-authorship. Each author claims full credit for each paper and each ensuing citation. This mismeasure of achievement is fuelling a flagrant increase in multi-authorship. Several alternatives to the h-index have been devised, and one of them, the individual h-index (hI), is logical, intuitive and easily calculated. Correcting for multi-authorship would end gratuitous authorship and allow proper attribution and unbiased comparisons.