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Between 2016 and 2020, a paper with a Chinese corresponding author was nine times more likely to list multiple corresponding authors than one from the rest of the world. That's not a rounding error — it's a structural signal about how research credit is assigned inside China's academic system.

Hu, Cai & Tian (Scientometrics, 2025) tore through nearly 1.75 million articles indexed by Clarivate's Web of Science. By 2020, roughly 30% of papers by Chinese researchers carried more than one corresponding author — nearly triple the global average of 8.8%. For context, the global average barely budged over the five-year window, inching from 7.1% to 8.8%. China's share jumped from 21.6% to 30%. Singapore and South Korea also ran hot, both hovering just under 20%, but removing those three countries drops the world average to just over 7.5%.

Why China's Corresponding-Author Counts Exploded

The disparity cuts deeper by discipline. In medicine and pharmacology, Chinese papers were nine times the global baseline (excluding Singapore and South Korea). Humanities and social sciences clocked in at five times. This isn't accidental — it's a direct response to incentives.

Wencan Tian, a social scientist at Beijing Normal University and co-author, puts it plainly: the old evaluation system in China placed outsized weight on first-author and corresponding-author positions for promotions, cash rewards, and grant access. When your career depends on bagging a corresponding-author slot, multiple listings become a rational strategy — even if some are what the field calls "gift authorship."

Reforms That Might Change the Game

In early 2020, China's education and science ministries issued a joint statement telling institutions to stop promoting or recruiting researchers solely on paper counts or citations. That kicked off a cascade. The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) ended cash rewards for publishing. It now requires explicit contribution statements and bans exaggerated roles. The SCI — Clarivate's citation index — is no longer the yardstick it once was.

Tian argues these reforms shift authorship back toward reflecting actual contribution rather than status distribution. Early evidence from this study's data (2020 is the last year in the window) already shows the uptick leveling off. The question is whether the multiple-corresponding-author rate will converge toward the global mean — and how fast.

China's evaluation overhaul has teeth. If it works, we'll see the 30% figure drop in the next five-year window. That's the metric worth watching.

Source: What's behind China's historically high counts of corresponding authors?
Domain: nature.com