Thinker, Soldier, Scribe: cross-sectional study of researchers' roles and author order in the Annals of Internal Medicine

ObjectiveHow researchers’ contributions relate to author order on the byline remains unclear. We sought to identify researchers’ contributions associated with author order, and to explore the existence of author profiles.DesignObservational study.SettingPublished record.Participants1139 authors of 119 research articles published in 2015 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.Primary outcomesPresence or absence of 10 contributions, reported by each author, published in the journal.ResultsOn average, first authors reported 7.1 contributions, second authors 5.2, middle authors 4.0, penultimate authors 4.5 and last authors 6.4 (p