Axiomatic Quantification of Co-authors' Relative Contributions

Abstract

Over the past decades, the competition for academic resources has gradually intensified, and worsened with the current financial crisis. To optimize the resource allocation, individualized assessment of research results is being actively studied but the current indices, such as the number of papers, the number of citations, the h-factor and its variants have limitations, especially their inability of determining co-authors' credit shares fairly. Here we establish an axiomatic system and quantify co-authors' relative contributions. Our methodology avoids subjective assignment of co-authors' credits using the inflated, fractional or harmonic methods, and provides a quantitative tool for scientific management such as funding and tenure decisions.