Scholarly gratitude in five geographical contexts: a diachronic and cross-generic approach of the acknowledgment paratext in medical discourse (1950–2010)

摘要

This study analyzed the use of acknowledgements in medical articles publishedin five countries (Venezuela, Spain, France, UK and USA) from 1950 to 2010. For eachcountry, we selected 54 papers (18 research papers, 18 reviews and 18 case reports), evenlydistributed over six decades, from two medical journals with the highest impact factors.Only papers written by native speakers in the national language were included. Theevolution of the frequency and length of acknowledgments was analyzed. Of 270 articlesstudied, 127 (47%) had acknowledgments. The presence of acknowledgments was associatedwith country (p = 0.001), this section being more common and longer in US andUK journals. Acknowledgments were most common in research papers (70 vs. 40% in casereports and 31% in reviews, p0.001). Reviews without acknowledgments were significantlymore common than those with (69 vs. 31%), but there was no trend in case reports.Altogether, articles with acknowledgments predominated only after 2000. Since the frequencyof use of acknowledgments remained stable over time in US and UK journals butincreased in non-Anglophone journals, the overall increase is attributed to the change innon-English publications. Authors acknowledged sub-authorship more in English languagejournals than in those published in the national language in France, Spain and Venezuela.However, the practice of acknowledging is increasing in non-Anglophone journals. Weconclude that the concept of intellectual indebtedness does not only differ from onegeographical context to another, but also over time and from one academic genre toanother.