In my laboratory the first authors was always the one who did most of the work. The scientific value of the content is more important than the number of co-authors. In more complex subjects the long list of co-authors is very often due to a narrow collaboration with different laboratories having complementary skills. There is no magic formula for the number of authors, all depends on the complexity of the subject and the multiple collaborations with others laboratories.

First author always has the most credit. I prefer single authors because it means the paper is consistent and you can present new and interesting ideas

As Andrew states, conventionally, the first author is usually the corresponding author as the first author is often the 'lead' researcher - whether that is as project leader and/or the person that has contributed the most i.e data collection, data analysis, manuscript writing etc. The 'lead researcher', for a few reasons, may hand over correspondence to another author i.e. they are project lead but feel that other team-members are more immersed in the main area that the article covers - especially where multiple articles come out of a single project.

Often, but not always, the last author is the 'consultant' i.e. the 'big, established name' that is good to have associated with the project - even if they have not contributed much/anything. With Higher Degree Research supervision, the supervisor (in my experience) is not usually last. They are ranked, after the student (as first author - as it is their data) according to contribution. It is expected, in this case, that the Principle Supervisor would be second author etc. That said, I have recently had an International HDR student who placed me last - as the consultant as this was the more common procedure in journals that are native to their home country. So - it does vary - but what I have outlined is common.

Multiple authorship, in today's context, is usually considered superior by journals and reviewers. Many methodologies and scientific disciplines, in particular, dictate this - as do research funding bodies etc. An experimental. clinical trial, for instance, (and no matter how good it was) would not get published with a single author. International reporting guidelines dictate this as well. I review for 40 international journals. Even with qualitative research, if I know that it is a single author, then I am immediately suspicious. Primary research is essentially a team-discipline. There are some formats where single authorship is okay - such as invited opinion pieces, editorials etc (where the author is a know and established expert in their field) and some conceptual approaches - such as concept analysis, discourse analysis etc.

Single-authored papers are the most challenging.

It does not matter the no of authors , certainly the number of authors should be

optimised . Actually quality of article , knowledge and technology distribution

with a optimum ( niether single nor maximum ) no of authors is the decision

of Principal / Inventing author.

In the research the design and execution of designed research problem is main contribution. Who will design and execute they can share first or corresponding author. remaining authors will prefer as a coauthor. If you publish any manuscript with multiple author, in India, University grant commission (UGC) credit distribution is first and corresponding author will take 70% weightage, remaing all authors can share the 30% weightage.

In my laboratory the first authors was always the one who did most of the work. The scientific value of the content is more important than the number of co-authors. In more complex subjects the long list of co-authors is very often due to a narrow collaboration with different laboratories having complementary skills. There is no magic formula for the number of authors, all depends on the complexity of the subject and the multiple collaborations with others laboratories.

Interesting contributions. I wish institution managers/administrators could reason alongside these responses. The scientific value and quality of the publication should matter more than the number of authors. What the research contributes to human development is far more important than any importance attached to the number of authors!

Sarmad A. Jameel Altaie this is a great discussion.

I think that the the strength of the paper does not relate to the number of authors. However, more labs contribute to the same paper allow more work in that same paper, which eventually gets more attention from the scientific community.

The order of the authors refers to the contribution of each one. Usually, the first author is the MOST contributor to the paper. The last name is the PI (and in many cases is the corresponding author because he holds the rights for the results).

What we see in some places, the institutions prefer the single authored papers more than co-authored ones DOES NOT make sense. Imagine a paper with 20 authors that is published in Nature or Science; how it compared to a single authored paper in a small or even unrecognized journal. ??!!

Unless the discipline has an alphabetic order for authors, the first position is the plumb position for a researcher.

Single authored papers may easily take a jaundiced, prejudiced, biassed or wrong viewpoint OR they may be well-integrated new, pioneering work on a refreshingly new topic.

Dual authored papers have the advantage of being refined through discussion and debate and unified definitions before being submitted a. So they suffer less from possibly being weird or untrustworthy science. So I recommend dual-authorship for your first paper. (especially a multi-discipline, multi-country paper).

Three authors never put in identically equal intellectual input into a paper. Reserve three-authored papers for cases where your supervisor has had some useful intellectual input, and has put his/her name at the end.

An author line with hundreds of authors in it is reserved for BIG research by BIG consortia with lots of resources. You are not there yet.

Hi,

If there are two collaborating authors, it seems that there is no difference between the importance awarded to each . If there are more than two, it is assumed that the rest of the collaborating authors contributed some unknown value to the paper.

In practice, two authors of a co-authored paper never contribute exactly the same intellectual input to the paper. (Each thinks he/she added more than half!)

The one question which is very frequently asked in interviews for jobs is 'What is your contribution'? If it is a single author paper, the comment is 'Oh, you are not a team worker'. Normally, the senior most author's (Research Supervisor) name should be the last. Because he is already well established. It is the young author who has to seek and look out for his /her career, hence he /she should get priority. In some laboratories, especially in UK, they follow alphabetical order - no complaints from any one. Quite sometime ago, I had posted a similar question and there was tremendous response.

If you have some time here is a similar question:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_do_you_think_about_single_author_paper

Dear colleagues many thanks for your participation.

I appreciate all kinds of opinions you gave even if it was partial, a discussion is enriched with different ideas. Furthermore, I believe that similar questions are not the same, nevertheless it would give a good background to build on.

Kind regards

Sarmad.

Interesting question. In my view, it is known that the first author is the one who has done most of the work. Thus, he/she should recieve better credit. Regarding the journals, the most important factor to them is the novelty and contribution of the paper.

Dear Sarmad,

A great discussion topic indeed !!! Unfortunately, as I and some fellow researchers have observed, majority of the journals/editorial desk look for the brand value of the author (Institue/organization), the reputation of the author (may be using RG or their respective websites), before they judge your manuscript on the scientific merit. In my modest opinion, every researcher who contributes to the work in an article, should be given an authorship. The first author majorly contributes.