Suppose a scientific article signed by a single author. In another situation, suppose this same article, but signed by more than one author. In your opinion, does the number of authors influence the facility or difficulty for a scientific article be published and receive citations after its publication?
Managing more that 6 coauthors is like trying to herd cats!
Never include names of non-contributors: it is dishonest and unethical.
A co-authored paper is always better in quality than solo paper, because it involves the use of more that one brain, one background and more than two eyes. Also a co-authored paper is always easier to write than a solo paper because you get immediate feedback before the paper is finally submitted and refereed. The number of authors does not influence the final refereeing or number of citations when subsequently published, because that depends on the relevance of passages in the paper to subsequent researchers' work.
Managing more that 6 coauthors is like trying to herd cats!
Never include names of non-contributors: it is dishonest and unethical.
@ Ian, the number of authors does not affect the quality of the manuscript. A solo author does not mean that the author did not give the manuscript to senior colleagues to read through for improvement. Also, this should not in any way influence citation. Articles should be appropriately cited irrespective of the number of authors.
Thank you for the answers! This morning I have remembered my participation in a commission to select and contract a new professor for certain department of my institution. In such occasion, two candidates presented very similar scientific productions, with publications in equivalent journals, practically same citation numbers, etc... However, it was observed that while the publications of "candidate one" were co-signed by several other authors, the papers published by the "candidate two" had very fewer co-authors and some of them were 'solo articles'. Under such circunstances, we attributed a higher score to scientific production of the "candidate two"... What you think about a situation like this?
@Walter: Tricky question. Did you want a professor who can co-ordinate activities with multiple people, or one capable of earning many "points" for managing to write so many papers by him/herself? My feeling is that they are both valid, but different approaches. I would rather have differentiated between the candidates on other more important criteria such as number of PhDs supervised to completion.
Well, a criterion must just be used. However, I strongly feel other parameters could be used besides the number of scientific publications such as conference participation, faculty/departmental commitments, MSc and PhD supervision on completion, community developtment services, etc.
Also, on a sincere note, I feel no two individual will have equal number of publications in equivalent journals.
Ian and Roland, in reality the candidates mentioned by me were newly doctor at the time, both of them with few publications (hence the tie in the item publications). The criteria that you pointed out were taken into account apart, when we focused in other items ( scientific supervisions and participation in judgement comissions). As a curiosity, none of these two candidates got the first place. The winner was another one, with a considerably higher general score...
Daniel, neither I nor the other members of the judgement commission knew the candidates previously (until the public examination begin) because they came from other states from Brazil. The rules of the public examination do not required the presentation of letters of reference.
Evaluating researchers has remain a question despite different metrics on ground. Kindly follow and write your suggestions on my question on the importance of impact factor. https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_the_importance_of_impact_factor_IF
I agree with Ian in the first question. The selection will depend on the goals you (your institution) want to achieve: just fill in the post; increase internal productivity; increase outside productivity; short term goal; midterm goal; long term goal...
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