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Authorship trends in software engineering

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Abstract

This paper aims to examine authorship trends in software engineering, especially those related to the number of authors, of scientific publications. We collected and mined around 70.000 entries from DBLP for 122 conferences and journals, for the period 1971–2012, in order to process several bibliometric indicators. We provide evidence that the number of authors of articles in software engineering is increasing on average around +0.40 authors/decade. The results also indicate that until 1980, the majority of the articles have a sole author, while nowadays articles with 3 or 4 authors represent almost half of the total.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Armando Freitas for his contribution to the Ruby crawler. The graphics were produced with the Matpotlib library available for the Python language. This work was supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia in the scope of the project: PEst-OE/EEI/UI0319/2014

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Correspondence to João M. Fernandes.

Appendix

Appendix

List of journals

ACM: ACM J Exp Algorith, ACM T Math Software, ACM T Progr Lang Sys, ACM T Softw Eng Meth; Cambridge: J Funct Program, Theor Pract Log Prog; Elsevier: Adv Eng Softw, Comp Lang Syst Struct, Inform Soft Tech, J Syst Soft, Sci Comput Program, J Vis Lang Comput; IEEE: IEEE Trans Soft Eng; IET: IET Softw; Springer: Ann Soft Eng, Autom Soft Eng, Constraints, Empir Soft Eng, Formal Asp Comput, Int J Par Progr, Innov Syst Soft Eng, Req Eng J, Soft Syst Model, Software Qual J, Soft Concepts Tools/Struct Program, Soft Tools Tech Transf, TAOSD; Wiley: J Soft Maint, Soft Focus, Soft Pract Exper, Softw Test Verif Rel; World Scientific: Int J Soft Eng Knowl Eng.

List of conferences

AGILE, AOSD, APSEC, ASE, ASEC, CBSE, CC, COMPSAC, COORDINATION, CP, CSEET, CSMR, DBPL, DSVIS, ECMFA, ECOOP, EDOC, EMSOFT, Ershov, ESEC, ESEM, ESOP, ESSoS, EUROMICRO-SEAA, EWSPT, FASE, FATES, FM, FMCO, FORMATS, FoSSaCS, FSE, GPCE, ICCBSS, ICECCS, ICFEM, ICGSE, ICMT, ICPC, ICPE, ICSE, ICSM, ICSP, ICSR, ICST, IFM, ISESE, ISSRE, ISSTA, IWPSE, IWSSD, METRICS, MoDELS, MSR, OOIS, OOPSLA, PASTE, PLDI, POPL, PPOPP, PROFES, QEST, QSIC, RE, REFSQ, RTA, SAS, SBES, SC, SCAM, SCM, SEFM, SEKE, SELMAS, SEW, SLE, SOFTVIS, SPIN, SPLC, SSR, TACAS, TAPSOFT, TOOLS, VEE, VMCAI, WCRE, WICSA, WIKIS, XP.

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Fernandes, J.M. Authorship trends in software engineering. Scientometrics 101, 257–271 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-014-1331-6

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Keywords

Mathematics Subject Classfication

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