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Sir Discussion of the relationship between citation rates and the place of one's name in the alphabet tends to use English-language publication. Different people use different


alphabets. The initial of my surname is the third letter of the Russian alphabet, but is close to the end of the English one. And there are different national traditions in compiling


reference lists. In the former Soviet Union and Russia, references in most scientific journals are listed first in the order of the Russian alphabet and then in the order of the English


alphabet. This tradition reflects the closed character of Soviet/Russian science. In the Soviet Union, Soviet results had to be cited first. Scientists could not cite more foreign


publications than publications of Soviet origin, especially before the 1980s. Using Medline data, I found that in 1995, of a total of 163,007 publications related to human subjects, 1,784


were in Russian. If the hypothesis of influence of author surname on citations is to be taken seriously, culturally different subsets of the publication data need to be described separately.


I agree with Christopher Stubbs (_Nature_ 388, 320; 1997) that alphabetical authorship must be encouraged. Some grant organizations ask for citations in applications only of publications


where the applicant is the first author or co-author. At the same time, the first author is often the one who had the least input. AUTHOR INFORMATION AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * Saratov


Medical University, Box 1528, Saratov, 410601, Russia Vasily Vlassov Authors * Vasily Vlassov View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar RIGHTS AND


PERMISSIONS Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Vlassov, V. Alphabetical listing. _Nature_ 390, 111 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1038/36428 Download citation * Issue


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