AbstractThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co‐citation analysis (ACA) ‐ the way co‐citation counts are defined. Co‐citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co‐citation counting ‐ the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non‐traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non‐traditional author co‐citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first‐author co‐citation counting when the same number of top‐ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed.