There are two trends. In the fist case all Scientists of a particular laboratory work on a single project. As a result we find multiple collaborators in a single paper.

Second, for a Ph. D. student it is often prerequisite to have one or two publications before submission of thesis.

Last but not least, there are a few residual paper hungry queen bees whom one has to oblige by spoon feeding otherwise he will utilize his power and threat student/s to spoil his career.

I have seen all the above examples during my long research career.

Might be outcome of more than one author or because of many other reasons, like jointly with the research guide, collaborative work, etc.

To distribute effort, share the experience and reduce the overall time of the experimental work, writing and publishing processes

Dr. Subir Bandyopadhyay,

Thank you very much for your prompt response.

Regards,

Modestus.

Dear Vishnu Kumar Gupta,

Thank you so much for your feedback.

Regards,

Modestus.

Dr. Mohammed Salah Nasr,

Thank you for your comment. I am very delighted to know that working together as a team saves time and facilitates publishing processes.

Regards,

Modestus.

As we know that, if we want to perform good and fruitful research work then it is very hard for a single person to accomplish it. So sometimes in terms of Guide or sometimes in terms of co-researchers there are other people attached to the research performed. So there are more than one authors in publications.

Dr. Nikisha Jariwala,

Thank you for sharing your insights. I appreciate your feedback.

Regards,

Modestus.

Collaborative is better than solo research work, the research experience of the group is betters than one researcher.

Thank you Dr. Ahmed Mahdi. Conducting research as a team is truly great. Thank you once more for your feedback.

Several researchers have different aspects on the same topic, may have different opinions how to evaluate, how to integrate the research ... - from different views, we can get new interdisciplinary research... even if topic seems very ordinary.

Best,

Sanja

There are two trends. In the fist case all Scientists of a particular laboratory work on a single project. As a result we find multiple collaborators in a single paper.

Second, for a Ph. D. student it is often prerequisite to have one or two publications before submission of thesis.

Last but not least, there are a few residual paper hungry queen bees whom one has to oblige by spoon feeding otherwise he will utilize his power and threat student/s to spoil his career.

I have seen all the above examples during my long research career.

Dear Dr. Tapas Chakrabarty,

Thank you so much for your response to my question. Your feedback is very useful to me. I am glad that you have been able to state with real life examples why published papers have more than one author - from your experience over the years and during your long research career.

Dr. Sanja Seljan,

Thank you very much. Your response to my question is noted with delight.

Regards, MO.

Agreed with Dr. tapas view but just wanna add, the third case of queen bee now a days is most prominent, but yes I agree the quality and content of the article improves with collaboration

Some publications can be generated via an "assembly line" approach when completing the final manuscript.

Thank you very much Sachin Sharma. The issue of queen bees discussed by Dr. Tapas Chakrabarty sounds funny and is in no doubt a statement of reality. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Regards,

Modestus.

Thank you Dr. Daniel Doss for your kind response to my question. Your comment is noted with delight.

Regards,

Modestus.

Dear okwu

Instead of saying thankyou for every comment you can click recommend tab it is as good as saying thankyou Moreover it will save your time as well as time of readers who are following your question

Thank you Sachin Sharma. Your suggestion is noted with great joy.

Regards, MO.

Dr. Modestus Okwu, In response to your question, I will say that academic research especially in the field of science and engineering is often done as a team work. Also, in project supervision, names of every member of the team is expected to appear in the published work.

Dr. Ken.

Your response to my question is noted with great thanks.

Regards, MO.

Dr. Derek Pyne, your comment is very much appreciated, you have said it all. Thank you so much for the link. The article "Willful Blindness: The Inefficient Reward Structure in Academic Research" is very useful. Thank you once more.

Regards,

Modestus.

My best papers were my co-authored papers because I had a free 24/7 in-house referee and critic!

A little ideas and a lot of authors :-)

Hi,

We are at the age of scientific collaboration. Collaboration has many advantages, and several disadvantages, and it seems that collaboration dictates the course of science these days.

There could be many reasons for this. The recent trend encouraged the co-authoring of papers. Also, there are many lazy academia now who pressurized their colleagues to include their names in the paper they know little or nothing about. Furthermore, the high cost of publishing international papers made real authors to include others who are ready to bear the cost. Some is out of pity to help their colleagues to grow.

in life sciences usually several different (often quite specialized) methods are used to thoroughly study a scientific question. That may explain that many papers have several authors. In many peer reviewed journals also the contribution of each author is given.

Kind regards, Fred

There are two types of co-authoring which are real and unreal ones ,the real will result by scientific value and benefit and the unreal will result by individual and personal benefit ,though at both cases there is form of benefit therefore the number of co-authored papers will be the most.

Dr. Kayode Asaju,

Thank you very much. Your response to my question is noted with thanks. I am glad to know that the high cost of open access journals have made real authors go looking for collaborators in order to minimize cost. Let me also say that I am not in support of researchers who contribute nothing to research work but find a place in authors list of published work. Everyone must be involved in the write-up, even if it means to dot i's and cross the t's. Thank you once more.

Regards,

Modestus.

Dear Rana A. Maya,

Your response to my question is noted with delight. Thank you for the vital information.

Regards,

Modestus

Dear Dr. Rana A. Maya, Your response to my question is noted with delight. Thank you for the vital information. Regards, Modestus

Prof. Fred Sinowatz,

Thank you very much for your prompt response to my question. The information you shared is valuable.

Regards,

Modestus

Dear Prof. Avishag Gordon,

Thank you so much for your time and useful comment. Please at your free time be kind to share the advantages and disadvantages of collaboration.

Regards,

Modestus.

Thank you Dr. Ian Kennedy and Dr. Josef Punčochář for your time and comment.

Regards, MO

Interesting question.

Regards. CK

Collaborative research saves time and effort.Different views,thoughts and ideas leads to quality.

In my opinion it is more of compulsion than the efforts

Thank you S.B. Patil and M.A. John, for your time and valuable comments.

We are living in a team-work era, and I strongly recommend such researching profile.

Emad

Modestus, I'll offer a more cynical answer. Sometimes one person needs to get some recognition, while another person actually does the work.

Have you encountered examples of "ghost writing"? I have. The person listed actually did none of the work. Very questionable practice.

But the other responses you got are the more ideal circumstance, of course. Collaboration is usually at least some of the reason for listing more names. And if it is a reason, it would be a good reason.

I agree with Albert. Such things happen.

Dear Albert Manfredi,

Thank you very much for your interesting response. It is good to know that ghost writers exist in academic system, where people are listed on papers without any form of contribution, what a wrong practice. These are issues to be addressed. What recommendation do you have for editors as a way to halt the questionable practice?

Regards,

Modestus

Thank you so much Dr. Emad Kamil Hussein, team work is just the best.

Regards,

Modestus.

Ghost writing - nice term indeed. In other words forceful inclusion of name as an author?

Thank you Dr. Subir Bandyopadhyay. I think a ghost writer is someone who made no contribution of any form in a paper but whose name appeared in a published work.

Dr. Derek Pyne,

Thank you so much for your clarification. The link you presented is very useful. Am glad to know about honorary authors.

Regards,

Modestus.

Let me add to @Albert Manfredi's cynicism, which I share. I know of a certain research center whose director had this attitude: it's my center and if you do research here, you are working for me and my name goes on your publications.

Some publications stemming from Big Science projects have enough coauthors to populate a town:

https://www.nature.com/news/physics-paper-sets-record-with-more-than-5-000-authors-1.17567

Very well reply has been given by Dr T. Chakrabarty.

I have investigated and noticed that roughly 85% of published papers in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings have more than one author.

Because two or more authors can receive more interesting results.

Any experimental paper including at least two difference fields, therefore must two researchers or more to introduce complete idea.

Regard

Raad

Because team work has many advantages, thats why people collaborate.

Thanks

How did you get the 85%? In any event, I agree with you that the number is high. Unfortunately, there is no way to examine the validity of authorship. Often times, a buddy system seems to exist where one author will include others and the others will include him/her on their published work. This is to increases citations and exposure which is unethical practice.

This is because the resaechers working with a team way. A lab. Is subdivided of some teams. Each team working in the same field.its mumber collaborates in the work and in the publication.. however some publication countain a lot of co-authors more than the article results.

I think the answers have already been given and same answers are repeated as the person answering are not reading previous answers and still the answers been acknowledged with thanks by questioner is this ethical to give perception without reading the whole discussion

Two or more good heads are better than one

To achieve anything, minds need to combine....In any kind of research problem, one has to take multiple aspects into consideration which is possible when we share ideas and put that into the practice

Thank you so much for your question Dr. Amir W. Al-Khafaji. Roughly 85% was obtained from research conducted by 10 science and engineering students. The students independently downloaded 100 published articles in different area of research making a total of 1,000 downloaded articles. It was observed that more than 85 out of 100 papers from each students inquiry have more than one author.

Summary-

Student 1 - research on Safety - 86 out of 100 papers have multiple authors

Student 2 - research on biogas - 88 multiple author out of 100 articles.

Student 3 - research on robotics - 91 multiple authors out of 100 articles.

Student 4 conducting research on Operations research - 88 multiple authors out of 100 articles.

Student 5 conducting research in Environmental Sc - 88 multiple authors out of 100 articles.

and so on......

It is really unfortunate that there is no way to examine the validity of authorship. How then do we solve this complicated issue as research collaborations proliferate on a daily basis?

Thank you Dr. Modestus, you have done a great job. I tried your method in my field by downloading 50 Journals and observed 43 articles with more than one author and only 10 with single author.

The discussion on honorary authors in particular and authorship in general is very important at this point in time.

How do we truly examine the validity of authorship?

How do we place honorary authors on check?

Thank you Dr. Chukwu. Your questions are very important, my respected scholars are very much available to answer you without delay. Thank you for finding time to observe and research on the issue of single vs multiple authorship.

Regards,

Modestus

@Modestus Okwu

Your generalization is skewed because your students only looked at publications in science or engineering. Had your students looked at humanities disciplines such as philosophy, literary studies, classics, or even history, you would have found that multiple authorship is rare.

Thank you Prof. Karl Pfeifer on a sincere note, my students only looked at publications in science and engineering which truly confirm your statement but I am glad that Dr. Ken who is a lecturer in humanities tried same in his field and confirmed that 43 out of 50 downloaded papers have multiple authors.

I suspect that multiple authorship in Dr. Ken's sampling occurs mainly in those disciplines that are more social science than humanities and where data collection/surveys might be more relevant, e.g. linguistics, or with non-science papers that discuss scientific matters (i.e. where some specialist knowledge of a science might be required, e.g. philosophy of biology). I just checked four issues of a top-ranked philosophy journal that I happened to have ready to hand on my bookshelf. Out of 53 papers, only 3 were coauthored (but by only two people each). All 3 coauthored papers dealt with topics in symbolic logic, where division of labor makes more sense than it does for topics heavily focused on conceptualization and interpretation.

Thank you very much Prof. Karl Pfeifer. I will not jump into conclusion till I hear from other RG scholars. There is no doubt that most published articles have multiple authors than single....Especially in hard and soft science.

Multiple authors are there due to various reasons such as:

- Lab based research

-Ph D research where names of the researcher and supervisor are included

- Interdisciplinary research

- Multi institutional research

-Joint research by researchers from more than one country

Thank you for your contribution Prof. Pundir.

Hello dear,

What I think is for better explanation of any fact in science one used to apply various approaches which authenticate the results and it is very difficult to do all the works by one alone means a good team is required for better execution of plan and to follow different protocol. thus most of the papers are having more than one author.

However, I agreed to Dr. M. A. John too as sometimes we are instructed to keep more authors because of personal relation or to manipulate publication process rather they actively participated in the methodology or the interpretation of results. e.g. I have seen some research papers of Gross morphology of bones, where one of the author is from Molecular genetics or Clinical medicine which is not related in any manner so could not understand the contribution of them.

I am not criticizing anyone but sometimes we found such things irrelevant.

With regards

Dr. Mahendra

Thank you very much for your comment Dr. Mahendra. It is really difficult to do a whole research work alone especially in hard and soft science. A great team is important.

Dear Kush,

Your answer and perception is also true. Sometimes it is followed by some people however a good interviewer can identify the irrelevant person and generally not consider that publication.

But one More thing I want to add that the apparently irrelevant person may also be involved in other works related to article as manuscript editing or statistical analysis etc. But these all are my personal opinions so one may or may not agree with.

With regards

Dr. Mahendra

Thank you very much Dr. Mahendra Pratap Singh Tomar. Your views are noted and considered very useful.

Regards, MO.

Dear mahendra

Kindly provide us with some ref from where u r making ur perceptions/ observations. As I can provide the same at any time. Secondly you r constantly saying about your perceptions however they may change as per time/ need/ environment. So it will be better to talk sense not about perceptions.

They can not stand alone. Others will pull them down.

Hi,

This is true for the humanities, but certainly not for the sciences. In the sciences and life sciences the reverse is true.It all depends on a disciplinary publication's dynamics.

Thank you so much Dr. Avishag Gordon .