4 ms·

Could it be enforced, or at least encouraged, by the funding agencies? That still leaves the problem of reputation-building; a paper where an individual is onl

Could it be enforced, or at least encouraged, by the funding agencies? That still leaves the problem of reputation-building; a paper where an individual is only one of 20 authors probably isn't so impressive on a CV.

scott_s 17y ago
Not just reputation building, but getting the researcher merit badge in the first place - the PhD. A PhD dissertation is expected to be the work of the student; it's supposed to prove that the student can do self-directed, novel research in their field. Of course, people do defend dissertations based on work that was a collaboration with others, but I think we're considering a level of collaboration not usually seen.
azanar 17y ago
That still leaves the problem of reputation-building; a paper where an individual is only one of 20 authors probably isn't so impressive on a CV. Is the effort expended for the paper able to be divided cleanly into chunks 1/20th the size, to be credited to each author in turn? Doing research, or any creative work, is not a manufacturing process; the output does not inevitably scale linearly based on the number of inputs. It is possible that a paper could describe something that was very impressive for 20 people to accomplish.
- etal 17y ago
  The papers I've seen that have more than a dozen or so authors often work like this: The first and second authors were the project drivers, and did the writeup; the names in the middle were involved in data collection, number-cruching or sub-projects, and are often distributed across different organizations; and the last author (or two) will be a very well-known name, someone who has basically blessed the project by granting their name to it as an established researcher in the area, but who most likely only advised the main researchers. In general it only counts on your CV if you're the first, second, or maybe third author. But a project with 20 people on it would probably collapse under the organizational weight before completion if it wasn't a pretty big deal. For example, the papers on the Human Genome Project and shotgun sequencing had a lot of authors, with the breakdown as described above.

scott_s 17y ago

Not just reputation building, but getting the researcher merit badge in the first place - the PhD. A PhD dissertation is expected to be the work of the student; it's supposed to prove that the student can do self-directed, novel research in their field. Of course, people do defend dissertations based on work that was a collaboration with others, but I think we're considering a level of collaboration not usually seen.

azanar 17y ago

That still leaves the problem of reputation-building; a paper where an individual is only one of 20 authors probably isn't so impressive on a CV. Is the effort expended for the paper able to be divided cleanly into chunks 1/20th the size, to be credited to each author in turn? Doing research, or any creative work, is not a manufacturing process; the output does not inevitably scale linearly based on the number of inputs. It is possible that a paper could describe something that was very impressive for 20 people to accomplish.

etal 17y ago
The papers I've seen that have more than a dozen or so authors often work like this: The first and second authors were the project drivers, and did the writeup; the names in the middle were involved in data collection, number-cruching or sub-projects, and are often distributed across different organizations; and the last author (or two) will be a very well-known name, someone who has basically blessed the project by granting their name to it as an established researcher in the area, but who most likely only advised the main researchers. In general it only counts on your CV if you're the first, second, or maybe third author. But a project with 20 people on it would probably collapse under the organizational weight before completion if it wasn't a pretty big deal. For example, the papers on the Human Genome Project and shotgun sequencing had a lot of authors, with the breakdown as described above.