Reply to “Authorship Order: Modest Proposals From a Retired Japanese Obstetrics‐Gynecology Professor”

We sincerely appreciate Professor Matsubara's thoughtful letter entitled “Authorship Order: Modest Proposals from a Retired Japanese Obstetrics-Gynecology Professor” [1], which provides valuable practical and cultural insights into our study “Global Trends in the Value of Author Order Across Medical Publications” [2]. His perspectives enrich the continuing dialogue on transparency and fairness in authorship practices across countries and academic disciplines. Professor Matsubara's emphasis on both the second-to-last author and the early determination of the corresponding author offers meaningful and original contributions to this discussion. In particular, highlighting the potential importance of the second-to-last author introduces a novel perspective for assessing substantial contributions within research teams—a factor that has been underrepresented in quantitative frameworks such as the SIGAPS scoring system [3]. We also concur that the customary assignment of senior department directors as the last or corresponding author, regardless of actual contribution, warrants reconsideration. This is an issue we also frequently encounter in academic settings. This phenomenon is commonly observed in Asian academic settings and aligns with the pattern we identified in Cluster B countries (Japan, India, Italy, Türkiye, and Spain), where the corresponding author frequently occupies the second-author position [2]. In our supplementary analyses (Table S2 and S6) [2], we also observed that such hierarchical authorship patterns appear across multiple specialties, including obstetrics and gynecology. These findings underscore that authorship order is not solely determined by scientific roles but is shaped by institutional structures, professional hierarchies, and cultural expectations. Integrating such qualitative insights into future bibliometric research will deepen our understanding of how different academic systems evaluate contributions and allocate authorship positions. Finally, Professor Matsubara's call for clearer departmental authorship policies and greater opportunities for early-career researchers fully resonates with the principles advocated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors [4]. We believe that the thoughtful integration of these proposals with data-driven global analyses can promote more equitable and transparent authorship practices, ultimately fostering a fairer international research environment. The authors have nothing to report. Hidenori Hashimoto is an employee of Pfizer Japan Inc., and received salaries from the company; however, the company neither provided any financial support for this study nor played any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or manuscript preparation. The other authors declare no conflicts of interest. The study we reported, titled “Global Trends in the Value of Author Order Across Medical Publications,” was conducted while Hidenori Hashimoto was enrolled as a working graduate student in the Department of Data Science, Juntendo University Graduate School of Medicine.