‘Surname strategies’ help authors beat citation alphabet bias

Scholars frustrated by their names getting lost in lengthy author lists are taking matters into their own hands by using “surname strategies” to get noticed in academia, a study has found.

Despite the supposed meritocracy of modern science, it is widely known that academics whose surnames start with letters towards the end of the alphabet often miss out on citations and general recognition for their work due to their lowly listings in author lists, which are, to a large degree, sorted alphabetically.

Studies have even confirmed that scholars with surnames early in the alphabet are more likely to attain prestigious positions, underlining the damage caused by “alphabetical bias”.

However, a paper in Scientometrics claims that scholars affected by this discrimination are fighting back by adopting tactics to lift themselves up author lists.

The study on “overcoming alphabetical disadvantage”, which analysed some 70,000 publications by 2,278 academics in the disciplines of psychology, sociology, economics and politics over a nine-year period, found that those with “surnames placed at the end of the alphabet…often employ strategies such as changing surname initials, using hyphenated surnames or adding prefixes to improve their positioning in the author list of the article”.

In the last case, the study found that authors with the traditional Dutch prefix of “van” – as in “van Basten” – were much more likely to drop it if their main surnames began with letters close to the start of the alphabet. Similarly, those with the Italian prefix “De” – as in “De Niro” – would include it if it offered an alphabetical advantage.

Other “surname strategies” include academics with multiple last names – a trait often found in Spain, Portugal and Brazil – deploying the surname that would give them an alphabetical boost, says the paper by Ali Baris Oz, who is based at Istanbul Technical University.

In the case of female academics, Dr Oz tracked how often women took different names – presumably their husbands’ – and found that they tended to opt “for a surname acquired after marriage, especially if it provided an alphabetical advantage”.

Hyphenation was found to be less common, even if it led to an advantage, possibly because scholars with hyphenated names tend to receive fewer citations in general than those with single surnames, according to the paper.

Surname strategies were also more apparent in disciplines such as economics and political science, where alphabetical sorting of authors is the norm, while disciplines with higher numbers of authors per article also saw more use of such ploys, the study found.

While some might regard such tactics as cynical, they often proved effective, the study concludes, noting that these strategies “often led to increased citations and better rankings”.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com