I am not purely from medical field but i am a resarcher in biomedical engineering and i feel that it is the impact of the content and scientific contribution in the publication that makes it worthy not a long list of co-authors. Many of the good resarchers publish as single or at the maximum two authors. But in fact it is not easy to conduct reasrch and publish your work alone. We need co-authors with some specialities so that they could add more value to the scientific work. Then it is also un-ethical to add someone who has no contribution as an author. In short the content and contribution of the scientific work describes its strength. it my opinion.

@ Talib , i absolutely agree with your response on this issue. But can you please shade more lights on what you meant by "who has no contribution as an author " taking into consideration the various roles different people can play in the research process not necessary going to the field or laboratory together. Thanks

Its a reality. Sometimes seniors by virtue of their position and power force others to include their names in the papers without any contribution. Sometimes such cases happen because of mutual understanding. You include my name and I will include yours.

@ Yusuf please refer to the reply of Subir.

You are also right, there are various roles as co-author ranging from gathering reasrch literature, preparation of problem, conducting experiemnts, analysis of results and then writing those results into a good form. Thus any person who do not have enough contribution to the reasrch work cannot be included as co-author. But if you get some help from a person or institution, you may include those in acknowledgemnts but not in authorship.

The issue has been discussed already in this thread. Multiple authored papers can be good when the paper is in involved in experiments. In general, each of single and multiple authored papers has advantages and disadvantages. Coauthors should contribute to part of the work.

@ Subir, exactly true. Sometimes people also want to be associated with some renowned and senior researchers thus putting their names even without their knowledge just that they had some form of relationship at a point in time. This is why some journals would ask for the role played by each author and confirm through email if it was sent with every authors consent. Thanks

@ Talib, i agree with what Subir remarked. You see actually sometimes you find a sort of displacement, some that actually that were supposed to be on the acknowledgement list will be on featured as authors and vis a vis. Thanks

@ Judeh, thanks for your response. Please can you attached or refer us to where we can get the earlier discussion on this matter as you said. From your remark, which has more advantage and heavier or given more scientific value and consideration. Thanks