Letters: Authorship Patterns in CJNR: 1970 to 1991

Abstract

Recent studies in several disciplines reveal that journal authorship patterns have changed considerably in the last 20 years. Evidence suggests that the pattern has gone from predominantly single authorships to a combination of co- and multiple authorships. To date, there have been no systematic studies in nursing per se, although there have been studies in related disciplines such as medicine and life sciences. I decided, therefore, to launch an investigation in nursing. I chose The Canadian Journal of Nursing Research as my target journal because it is the oldest national refereed journal in nursing that is devoted almost exclusively to research in the field. I examined all major articles from 1970 to 1991. Excluded were abstracts, book reviews, briefs submitted to commissions, critiques, and rebuttals, editorials, letters to the editor, reports of conference proceedings, special columns such as "Query and Theory" or "Viewpoint," tributes, and works with an unspecified number of authors. The data were grouped into one seven-year interval and three five-year intervals as follows: 1970-1976, 1977-1981, 1982-1986, and 1987-1991. Each interval contained 20 issues. A record sheet for each of the intervals was compiled. The number of authors, that is, single, double, and multiple for each of the years and for the total period was calculated. Then the number of authors was converted to percentages for each year and for the total period.