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Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to identify the research contributions of authors and subauthors in order to outline how authorship, as opposed to acknowledgment, is awarded in the lab-based life sciences.

Design/methodology/approach - The work tasks described in author contribution statements and acknowledgments sections of research articles published in Nature Chemical Biology were classified according to a three-layered taxonomy: core layer; middle layer; outer layer.

Findings - Most authors are core or middle layer contributors, i.e. they perform at least one core or middle layer task. In contrast, most subauthors are outer layer contributors. While authors tend to be involved in several tasks, subauthors tend to make single contributions. The small but significant share of authors performing only outer layer tasks suggests a disconnect in author attribution between traditional author guidelines and scientific practice. A level of arbitrariness in whether a contributor is awarded authorship or subauthorship status is reported. However, this does not implicate first or last authorships.

Research limitations/implications - Data from one journal only are used. Transferability is limited to research in high impact journals in the lab-based life sciences.

Originality/value - The growth in scientific collaboration underlines the importance of gaining a deeper understanding of the distinction between authorship and subauthorship in terms of the types of research contributions that they de facto represent. By utilizing hitherto unexplored data sources this study addresses a gap in the literature, and gives an important insight into the reward system of science.

This paper explores the relationship between an author's position in the bylines of an article and the research contributions they have made to analyze the validity of five bibliometric counting methods (arithmetic, fractional, geometric, harmonic, and harmonic parabolic author credit allocation) in the field of Chemical Biology. By classifying the tasks found in the author contribution statements of articles published in Nature Chemical Biology according to a three-tiered scheme, it was possible to divide the authors into three types: core-layer authors, middle-layer authors, and outer-layer authors. When ordering the authorships according to the position in the bylines, there is a distinct u-shaped distribution for the share of authors involved in writing the paper or designing the research (i.e., core authors) and for the average number of tasks performed by each author. The harmonic parabolic model best distributes author credit according to the observed empirical data. It also outperforms the other models in predicting which authors are core authors and which are not. The harmonic parabolic model should be the preferred choice for bibliometric exercises in chemical biology and fields with similar practices regarding authorship order.