domingo, 1 de agosto de 2021

Necroauthorship - Dead scientists who continue to publish

 

In 2018 (email below) I questioned how many years after the death of a scientist could his name continue to appear as a co-author of scientific articles, in violation of the authorship rules, interestingly, on July 29 an article was published in the journal Scientometrics, whose author suggests a new word to describe this miraculous ability "necroauthorship" On it he mentioned the case of Paul Erdös who was able to publish 10 years after death:

PS - Should journals ask all co-authors for proof of life?


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De: F. Pacheco Torgal
Enviado: 29 de Outubro de 2018 13:08
Assunto: The immortal scientists that keep on publishing even after they´ve died

Why is that science watchdogs are not very much concerned over fake authorship? Do they really believe its normal that someone can produce a paper every 5 days has been mentioned by Stanford Full Professor John Ioannidis in the email below?

Let´s look for instance to Arnold L. Rheingold who according to Scopus has 2055 publications and that in 2018 at the age of 78 years old has manage to publish 37 journal papers. Or Howard Maibach that has 1734 Scopus publications and at the age of 89 years old publishes around 25 Scopus publications per year. Or to Harold A.Scheraga that has 1239 Scopus publications and keeps on publishing at the age of 97 ! What do they drink ? Science viagra ?

Or even better to Alan Roy Katritzky who according to Scopus has/had 1658 publications. Its truth that he died at the age of 86 years the same year that he published 27 publications referenced on Scopus being that even one year after his death almost a dozen with his name were published referenced on Scopus. Of course, we can imagine a scientist that left his "team" so many excellent ideas that for the next years after his death they keep on adding his name to the publications ! But how many years after one´s death is it possible to keep publishing? 1, 5, 50 years ?