Corresponding Authors: Past and Present How Has the Role of Corresponding Author Changed Since the Early 2000s? [ICSR Perspectives]

Abstract

With over 1.7 million researchers active in the role of Corresponding Author between 2020 and 2021, the role of Corresponding Author, and the research community’s understanding of it, remains critical to research evaluation. In this short infographic, we analyzed Corresponding Authors who were linked to journal articles indexed in Scopus over a 20 year period. We explored which authors are assigned the role and found that the proportion of women in the role is lower than men, but is rising, and that there is a small but growing trend for authors to have more than one Corresponding Author. As well as exploring when researchers first take on the role in their career, we demonstrate that the role is not a reliable signal of seniority – as it is sometimes assumed to be.

Keywords: Corresponding author, Research trends, Research careers, Bibliometrics, Scopus