Very nice questions Saheed. I have experience with various forms of collaborative writing and I am happy to share my experiences with others. but it might help to receive a bit more concrete questions I guess. vincent

Vincent Blok Many thanks for your response. For example, if five authors are to write a research paper, what is the best approach to come up with a quality paper promptly?

I have collaborated with a number of people when writing papers. To be honest, I have been pretty flexible and adapted my approach depending on the situation and the person/people I'm working with.

Whatever the case may be, I find it's really good to talk openly about expectations and practical matters like contacts, timings, aims and roles early on. It's helpful to make a few notes setting this out.

If you do this at the outset, it avoids any confusion or misunderstanding later on. Should problems arise anyway, you have a common anchor point for discussion and resolution.

Hope this helps. Good luck with your work.

Darren Leech Thank you very much for your contribution.

Ok Sahee, with five authors, it is difficult to write a high impact paper if everybody actually involved in the writing process (it becomes a mess and the reviewer will notice). I agree with Darren that clarity of each role is key, and it may be that some authors are contributing to the overall conceptualization the article together with the first author, while others provide a more detailed contribution by contributing a particular case for instance. Of course, everybody should be involved in the decision making process of the article as a whole, but it is not a problem if particular people take particular responsibilities. Hope this helps

Many thanks for the exiting question Saheed. In my experience, the most effective form of co-writing differs quite much depending on not only the type of paper (e.g. review or research), but as well a lot on the purpose of engaging various authors (e.g. combining different relevant academic knowledge, close knowledge gaps, bring in stakeholder knowledge, establish collaboration), the origin of the collaboration (starting from a conference workshop, versus being members of the same small research project) and the overall number of authors (the maximum I co-led was an author team of 183, with other groups between 20 and 50).

So, check for the aims, the context and desired co-authors first. Then adapt the following points.

In my experience, a key ingredient for effective writing is often a clear mandate for a lead author, or even better a small lead author team. Those people should have clarity around what the paper is about and should work out a process/ structure for involving others. Often it is more difficult to find somebody to do that task and carry the writing to the finish line, than to have others accept/ welcome leadership. But, the latter needs to be secured by open communication, too. As Vince and Darren said: clarify expectations.

A second key ingredient is a proper process that involves communication channels to organize collaboration and writing. In my experience, well structured emails with clear instructions and draft manuscripts providing advince on where to add what kind of contribution are of help. If collaboration numbers are larger, we have made good experiences with using structured workshops and even surveys to collect inputs/ feedbacks, in combination with more open exchange.

A third point that is of help is a clear, draft paper outline and structure, which ideally should be agree upon early on by the different authors, which includes some of the key terms and research aims. Those might as well grow organically, which may be supportive for learning, but that could as well substantially slow down process. Agree what you talk about when starting to write, if possible.

One point that in my experience has helped to speed up things is limiting cross-communication between the writing team and focussing communication on the lead author(s) - with them collecting individual responses and developing new drafts. On the downside, that may limited learning between team members and development of team spirit.

You may as well think about developing a publication portfolio with your co-authors, with different authors leading different pieces, to incentise engagement and leadership.

Sorry, got a bit long. That leads me to my last point: get enthusiastic about co-authoring ;-)

Hope this is of help!

Niko

Vincent Blok Your contribution clearly points at the need for all authors to be on the same page from the onset. Defining the expected role of each author is a good approach to avoid any form of conflict at a later time. Thanks for these insights.

Niko Schäpke The points you highlighted are not only interesting but important and detailed. Many thanks for sharing your experience on the subject matter.

Saheed, we have also thought a lot about this in our research group and developed a template that clarifies for each writing project the expectations, roles, and contributions of co-authors. This is based much on this paper by Oliver et al. (2018) which is also on RG. Hope this helps! Article Strategies for effective collaborative manuscript developmen...

Hi Saheed. I think the best approach to persuasive collaborative writing is a pre-agreement on how the authorship will be. The determination of either the lead author and contributing authors should be fairly based on individual contribution. Lack of arrangement has led to many conflicts among authors, and the best way to tackle this is by a proper understanding of the authorship roles and interests before writing. I think this can work well with either kind of research.

It does look like that you need a "writer at large" who takes care about a consistant writing - all other attempts create problems in the peer review process

In my view, collaboration writing is a good idea, in the general topic, collaborate idea to completed and create good quality articles.