An Increase of the Papers with Multiple Corresponding Authors: A Global Trend That Includes an Inappropriate Authorship Practice in a Certain Local Academy.

Recently, papers with multiple corresponding authors (co-correspondence) are frequently noticed in scientific journals. This is a trend that parallels a significant increase in research collaboration, but its rapidity raises concern about whether the legitimacy and value of the corresponding authorship are changing or even damaged. This study investigated how extensive and sound the trend of co-correspondence in science and engineering is. The increasing trend of co-correspondence papers was confirmed by examining SCOPUS index (www.scopus.com) for the papers published by scholars of the USA, Japan, South Korea, and China in 2008-09 and 2018-2019. The number of co-correspondence papers indeed increased in all four countries. However, the numbers varied significantly among the countries, markedly higher in South Korea and China cases, which also showed far higher numbers of the papers with a co-corresponding author who is the only member from his group. To dig into reality, South Korean scholars were surveyed with questionnaires regarding the trend of co-correspondence. Over 64% of respondents answered that they had participated in papers where multiple corresponding authors are listed, and 22% of them thought that the co-corresponding author did not play his due role and the co-corresponding authorship was exchanged between friends or given as a courtesy for various reasons. Although corresponding authorship allocation is majorly a concern for journal editors, a trend of inappropriate practices or misuse of co-corresponding authorship calls for local and global academic community awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]