Order and disorder: alphabetical authorship across research fields

research data bite 25.

In scholarly publishing, the order in which authors are listed is rarely just a formality. It reflects long-held conventions, silent negotiations, and often the implicit structure of contribution and credit. First and last authorship, in particular, carry weight, which is sometimes even being used as indicators in bibliometrics. While CRediT author statements are gaining ground, they appeared in only about 30% of research publications in Dimensions in 2024; we are still far from relying solely on formal contribution taxonomies.

Alphabetical authorship is often understood as a norm of fairness, especially in fields where contributions are seen as roughly equal. It can avoid conflict, flatten hierarchies, and signal a particular disciplinary culture. In that sense, it's a kind of order: simple, impartial, and rule-based.

But alphabetical order also introduces ambiguity. In a research environment increasingly driven by metrics, where first and last authorship signal leadership or seniority, alphabetical lists resist easy interpretation. They offer formal order, but may obscure the underlying social or intellectual structure of the work.

Unequal representation

In some disciplines, the author list is still said to be alphabetical. This first chart shows that in fields like mathematics and economics, a higher share of papers with five or more authors follow A-to-Z ordering. In mathematics, over 10% of these large-team articles are alphabetical while in biomedical sciences, it is close to zero.

But large author teams are not evenly distributed across fields, as seen on this chart too. In biomedical and chemical sciences, more than half of articles have more than 5 authors. In many humanities and social science fields, the proportion is closer to 5%, which naturally limits how often alphabetical patterns can be meaningfully observed.

Since I was surprised to find such a small proportion of research articles using alphabetical authorship, I decided to look at the trend in the last 15 years.

..but in quiet decline

This second chart reveals that even in fields where alphabetical authorship was once common, it's declining steadily over time. Economics, education, philosophy, and even mathematics all show downward trends since 2010.

In other disciplines, particularly those shaped by clinical or experimental science, alphabetical order never had much of a presence, and that has not changed.

What’s happening, perhaps, is not the abandonment of fairness, but a shift toward clarity. As team sizes grow and evaluations become more granular, researchers may feel greater pressure to assign and assume specific author positions. Alphabetical order, once a shared understanding, can now feel like a risk: too easy to misread, especially outside one’s field.

Reading between the lines

There’s no right or wrong way to order authors; only choices that reflect the norms of each scholarly community. But the fading of alphabetical authorship is a quiet signal: the rules of recognition are shifting, and so is the culture of collaboration.

CRediT author statements should be the tool used to clarify author roles. While still unevenly adopted, they provide a structured way to clarify who did what, without relying on the ambiguous shorthand of position.

Code

WITH pub_data AS (
  SELECT
    p.id AS pub_id,
    CONCAT(cat.code, ". ", cat.name) AS for_name,
    cat.code AS for_code,
    COUNT(p.authors) AS author_count,
    ARRAY(
      SELECT LOWER(a.last_name)
      FROM UNNEST(p.authors) AS a
    ) AS last_names
  FROM `dimensions-ai.data_analytics.publications` p,
       UNNEST(p.category_for.first_level.full) AS cat
  WHERE
    p.type = "article"
    AND p.year BETWEEN 2010 AND 2024
),

evaluated AS (
  SELECT
    pub_id,
    for_code,
    for_name,
    author_count,
    NOT EXISTS (
      SELECT 1
      FROM UNNEST(last_names) AS name WITH OFFSET i
      WHERE i > 0 AND name < last_names[OFFSET(i - 1)]
    ) AS is_alphabetical
  FROM pub_data
),

aggregated AS (
  SELECT
    for_code,
    for_name,
    COUNT(DISTINCT pub_id) AS total_articles,
    COUNTIF(author_count >= 5) AS articles_5plus,
    COUNTIF(author_count >= 5 AND is_alphabetical) AS alphabetical_5plus
  FROM evaluated
  GROUP BY for_code, for_name
)

SELECT
  d.Discipline,
  a.for_name,
  a.total_articles,
  a.articles_5plus,
  a.alphabetical_5plus,
  ROUND(100 * a.articles_5plus / a.total_articles, 2) AS pct_with_5plus_authors,
  ROUND(100 * a.alphabetical_5plus / a.articles_5plus, 2) AS pct_alpha_among_5plus
FROM aggregated a
LEFT JOIN `disciplines_ffl` d
  ON CAST(a.for_code AS INT64) = d.ffl
ORDER BY d.Discipline, a.for_name