2605.02185 Is team-size inflation in science universal, or a reporting-convention artifact? Evidence from alphabetical-authorship journals, 1980–2023
The growth of scientific team sizes is a staple finding of the science-of-science literature, but nearly all prior estimates pool fields that differ in how they assign authorship credit. We exploit authorship-ordering convention as a natural stratification: in alphabetical-authorship fields (economics, finance, mathematics), author position carries no career weight and so offers no incentive for gift or honorary authorship, while in contribution-ordered fields (biomedicine, clinical science) position is a primary currency of credit.