DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18037414
title: The Complex Ecosystem of Hyperprolific Authors - Replication Package

description: This replication package accompanies the paper "The Complex Ecosystem of Hyperprolific Authors" submitted to Scientometrics in September 2025 and provides all the resources required to reproduce our systematic review on hyperprolific authorship. 

By making these materials openly available, we aim to ensure transparency, facilitate reuse, and support further research on hyperprolific authorship and related academic practices.

Content of the replication package

The replication package contains the following materials:





HyperprolificAuthors-RP-Step0-Scopus.csv – the complete set of articles retrieved from Scopus using the search string detailed below in TITLE-ABSTRACT-KEYWORDS (query run in February 2025).




HyperprolificAuthors-RP-Step0-ACMDigitalLibrary.csv – the complete set of articles retrieved from ACM Digital Library using the search string detailed below in TITLE-ABSTRACT-KEYWORDS (query run in November 2025).


HyperprolificAuthors-RP-Step0-IEEEXplore.csv – the complete set of articles retrieved from IEEE Xplore using the search string detailed below in TITLE-ABSTRACT-KEYWORDS (query run in November 2025).

HyperprolificAuthors-RP-Step0-Springer.csv – the first 140 articles retrieved from Springer Link using the search string detailed below in the full text using English, Article and Research article, and up to 2024 as filters (query run in November 2025) and sorting them by relevance (query run in November 2025).

HyperprolificAuthors-RP-Step0-OpenAlex.csv – the complete set of articles retrieved from OpenAlex using the search string detailed below in TITLE-ABSTRACT and using Article and up to 2024 as filters (query run in November 2025), sorted by relevance (query run in November 2025).



HyperprolificAuthors-RP-Step0-seedSnowballing.csv – the list of seed articles used to initiate the snowballing process (query run in February 2025).




HyperprolificAuthors-RP-Step0-setSnowballing.csv – the full set of articles retrieved through incoming citations (i.e., studies citing the seed papers) collected from the Scopus dataset (query run in February 2025).


HyperprolificAuthors-RP-Step0-manualSearch.csv – the complete set of articles retrieved manually by expert-contact, hand-searching of conference abstracts, and reference search.



HyperprolificAuthors-RP-Step1-deduplication.csv – the merged list of articles obtained from Step 0 after removing duplicates.




HyperprolificAuthors-RP-Step2-screening.csv – the complete list of articles from Step 1, annotated with scores assigned by all evaluators based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria applied to abstracts.




HyperprolificAuthors-RP-Step3-eligibility-Hyperprolific.csv – the set of eligible articles strictly focused on hyperprolific authorship, including scores assigned by all evaluators after full-text screening.




HyperprolificAuthors-RP-Step3-eligibility-relatedBehaviours.csv – the set of eligible articles concerning academic (mis)behaviours related to hyperprolific authorship, including scores assigned by all evaluators after full-text screening.




HyperprolificAuthors-RP-Step4-inclusion-Hyperprolific.csv – the final list of included articles strictly related to hyperprolific authorship.




HyperprolificAuthors-RP-Step4-inclusion-relatedBehaviours.csv – the final list of included articles related to academic (mis)behaviours associated with hyperprolific authorship.




PRISMA chart – a visual summary of the number of articles at each stage of the review process.



Digital libraries: the Scopus, ACM Digital Library, OpenAlex, Springer Link, IEEE Xplore databases.Search string

hyper prolific authors OR hyper-prolific authors OR hyperprolific authors ORmost prolific authors OR highly productive authors OR hyper prolific researchers ORhyper-prolific researchers OR hyperprolific researchers OR most prolific researchers ORhighly productive researchers

Inclusion criteria· The abstract and full text must be written in English;· The publication must appear in a peer-reviewed venue;· The study must focus on the characterization of hyperprolific authors or address (mis)behaviors related to this phenomenon.Exclusion criteria· No free access to the full text is available;· It is not a peer-reviewed contribution, such as editorials, books, comments, and perspectives.· It is a secondary study, as a (systematic) literature mapping or reviewGuidelinesThe adopted methodology follows the established reproducibility guidelines (Keele et al. 2007). Besides performing a query-based search on the digital library, the selection of primary studies involved a snowballing stage, as outlined in theguidelines proposed by Wohlin et al. (Wohlin 2014). The full selection procedure is presented via the PRISMA chart (available in the reproducibility package) following the PRISMA framework (Page et al. 2021) and illustrating the application of inclusion and exclusion criteria during both the abstract screening and full-text review phases. 

Keele, S., et al.: Guidelines for performing systematic literature reviews in software engineering. Technical report (2007)

Page, M.J., McKenzie, J.E., Bossuyt, P.M., Boutron, I., Hoffmann, T.C., Mulrow, C.D., Shamseer, L., Tetzlaff, J.M., Akl, E.A., Brennan, S.E., Chou, R., Glanville, J., Grimshaw, J.M., Hr´objartsson, A., Lalu, M.M., Li, T., Loder, E.W., Mayo-Wilson, E., McDonald, S., McGuinness, L.A., Stewart, L.A., Thomas, J., Tricco, A.C., Welch, V.A., Whiting, P., Moher, D.: The prisma 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews. BMJ 372 (2021) https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n71

Wohlin, C.: Guidelines for snowballing in systematic literature studies and a replication in software engineering. In: Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering, pp. 1–10 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1145/2601248.2601268