  Prior investigations have offered contrasting results on a troubling
question: whether the alphabetical ordering of bylines confers citation
advantages on those authors whose surnames put them first in the list. The
previous studies analyzed the surname effect at publication level, i.e. whether
papers with the first author early in the alphabet trigger more citations than
papers with a first author late in the alphabet. We adopt instead a different
approach, by analyzing the surname effect on citability at the individual
level, i.e. whether authors with alphabetically earlier surnames result as
being more cited. Examining the question at both the overall and discipline
levels, the analysis finds no evidence whatsoever that alphabetically earlier
surnames gain advantage. The same lack of evidence occurs for the subpopulation
of scientists with very high publication rates, where alphabetical advantage
might gain more ground. The field of observation consists of 14,467 scientists
in the sciences.
