title: Kin of coauthorship in five decades of health science literature.
abstract: Family background-kinship-can propagate careers. The evidence for academic nepotism is littered with complex associations and disputed causal inferences. Surname clustering, albeit with very careful consideration of surnames' flows across regions and time periods, can be used to reflect family ties. We examined surname patterns in the health science literature, by country, across five decades. Over 21 million papers indexed in the MEDLINE/PubMed database were analyzed. We identified relevant country-specific kinship trends over time and found that authors who are part of a kin tend to occupy central positions in their collaborative networks. Just as kin build potent academic networks with their own resources, societies may do well to provide equivalent support for talented individuals with fewer resources, on the periphery of networks.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology, College of Public Health and Health Professions, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32610; Department of Epidemiology, College of Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32610; Centre for Health Informatics, Institute of Population Health, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom; m.prosperi@phhp.ufl.edu.
authors.forename: Mattia
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Prosperi
authors.affiliation: Centre for Health Informatics, Institute of Population Health, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, United Kingdom;
authors.forename: Iain
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Buchan
authors.affiliation: Infectious Diseases Clinic, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Rome 00168, Italy;
authors.forename: Iuri
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Fanti
authors.affiliation: Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza 50018, Spain; Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza 50009, Spain;
authors.forename: Sandro
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Meloni
authors.affiliation: Genomics, Genetics and Biology Innovation Pole, Perugia 06134, Italy;
authors.forename: Pietro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Palladino
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820.
authors.forename: Vetle I
authors.initials: VI
authors.lastname: Torvik
mesh_terms: D000047:Academies and Institutes; D035843:Biomedical Research; D005190:Family; D006801:Humans; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D009275:Names
keywords: PubMed; demographic model; health science literature; kinship; social capital