Why is it becoming increasingly rare to see single-authored journal papers?

In my case there is no possibility to do some extended research by myself. Someone is preparing samples, someone else doing an additional characterization (several people). Why I cant do everything? Because I dont have time do learn every technique in detail and of course I dont have a direct access. As I remember I saw some theoretical single-authored papers (condesed matter physics) but also rare. I can do more in collaboration than by myself.

In my view, it is due to the multi-disciplinary nature of the work, especially for experimental works. Also we can see, two or more authors are listed as equal contributors in the case of multi-authored papers.

Cooperation is more time economic and time saving.

In some areas research is done in groups (e.g. lab work), so, articles have many authors. Sometimes, one author prefers to work on literature reviews, while another one is good in data collection and a third one in data analysis. Then it makes sense to specialize - everybody can do what they like - and write articles together. If you wish to collect data from several countries, you might also decide to find co-authors from abroad who can collect such data, then you won't have to travel abroad and also you won't have to worry about language barriers (if co-authors speak local languages) or cultural differences. Also, sometimes, even if both authors prefer to e.g. write literature reviews, it may make sense to write an article together: then the resulting article may be even better.

Thank you all Lukasz, Volker, Subramanyan, Alejandro, Marius, Maosheng, and Tiia for your very valuable inputs which interrelatedly drew a bigger picture of the modern authorship. The topics being researched seem now to become new, more sophisticated, specific, interdisciplinary, costly, and difficult (especially now in relation to language, culture, and geography). Networking and Internet surmounted a lot of the barriers coming with the aspects you mentioned above. The nature of the contribution has changed as a result.

Thank you again,

Faysal

Recently, while You're publishing someting, You have to characterize samples with few techniques. If You do it i.e. with one, the reviewers will say that Your statements are too speculative. To publish, You must have few methods, very often expensive and time consuming - and nobody knows everything, so You have to say somehow "thank you" to the people by making them co-authors. I also agree with other reseachers from this discussion.

I think a number of clear and correct answers have been provided to the question - undoubtedly, this is due to modern research being multidisciplinary, with specialized methodological experts and inter- and intragroup collaborations.

What worries me in this context, however, is the fact that in several evaluation processes, it appears that single-author publications are still being regarded as especially meritorious, while multi-autor papers get less weight.

Personally I see singe-author papers in modern biomedical science rather as a red flag, indicating that something may be wrong, e.g. raising the question about the social skills of the person - is he/she unable to work in a group? What are your views on this?

In my view, co-auther papers also should get considerable merit, at least for those listed as equal contributors. Getting a single authored paper is a nice thing. Multi-authored papers also indicates the collaboration skills of the researchers as well as the research groups. Another advantage is, discussion among different specialists make the article technically and scientifically stronger.

Subramanyan, why is "getting a single auhored paper a nice thing"? Is it because you managed to avoid collaborating with others (to be a bit provocative), or is it because finding agencies still think this is a bigger achievement than a coauthored paper, or for some other reasons?

Multi-authored papers, especially in newly pursued fields, are certainly a good sign that there are a sense of common understanding among a big number of researchers (who carry different skills at different levels) about the major aspects in their field that require further investigations. That actually encourages collaboration, and increases the interaction and social skills, which what make the papers more to be multi-authored. However, in my opinion, single-authored papers nowadays seem to be made by researchers who achieved a lot in their field, to reach to specific, new, and short outcomes that are suited to be published in single-authored papers.

Dear colleagues,

At present we often do interdisciplinary projects. I must say the time of heroes is over, teams are our future. Science is about effective teams, therefore more authors participate on articles. More authors may combine their skills (combination of their knowledge, experience, power, abilities, wisdom...). Partners with different scholarly interest may complement our expertise and thus enrich the quality of papers.

in my opinion, the number of coauthors is a function of the subject of your research. If you are publishing on a very specialized topic, it is more likely that there wont be coauthors. This does not mean that you are a lonesome hero ... Another reason for single authorship is perhaps that you are not a mainstream author. I do not rate this as a severe shortcoming of your research.

Actually, I did not really like the argument that many authors make the referee more willing to accept the article. If an article is faulty, I reject it as as referee, no matter how many authors.

In very few cases names are added as co-author just to oblige someone.

I know a professor who insist to add his daughter"s name as author so her API Score can be increased and help to get good academic post in some university.

A small touch of humour in this fascinating subject:

"A letter from the frustrated author of a journal paper"

Negative nuances:

Three persons conduct individual experiments, then hold a reunion, read each other, and publish three three-author articles.

Because of grants scientists now depend more on their chiefs who, doing no science, ask for money from goverments and then appear in the lists of authors.

The funding agencies play a big role. It is getting harder and harder to secure funds for a new idea when you are the sole PI on the proposal. The referees think that "naturally" no one agrees with you on the idea you are presenting. Also, they have limited funds and they want to distribute it among as many researchers as possible. Not necessarily a good policy though.

Hi. How are you? One reason is that the science is becoming more complicated than before. Therefore it needs more scientific work than before times and needs more persons to work on a subject. Undoubtedly by increasing the number of authors in a paper, the quality and scientific value of a paper increases.

I'm suprised that no-one has mentioned study 'validity', 'reliability', 'trustworthiness' etc - so far in this interesting thread. Imagine a clinical trial or a systematic review with one author (so presumably - one researcher) - where would be the cross-checking? If we take qualitative approaches, one of it's rigour criticisms is the added potential for 'subjective bias'. With a single author - that suspicion and/or eventuality is increased. That said, I don't have a problem with 'conceptual/theoretical or discursive' papers with single authors - as there is no generation of data or they are 'opinion' pieces.

I would like to comment about what Dean Whitehead mentioned regarding increased reliability of research article having two or more authors. I think, this assumption is not a given. For example if both of the authors have the same line of thought about a phenomenon then it is very likely that they will not correct each other. Usually, getting the work published ASAP will be the first thing on their minds. The role of cross-checking is better played by peer review process during publication. This way the potential issue of conflict of interest (COI) is resolved. Besides, in many articles with more than three authors, a few of the authors will very likely be 'floaters' with minimal contribution.

H - agreed. It's not a guarantee that more authors equals more reliability and, as you've highlighted, it potentially could mean 'no-more' than with a single author - especially with 'group-think' etc. However, I think that those cases would most likely be the exception. Unfortunately, there's not much way of telling. If there are multiple authors and the findings look rigorous and sound enough - that's probably good enough for the editor/reviewer/reader. A reviewer can only cross-check against the summary manuscript - so they can't validate the whole data sets etc - but I take your point.

First of all, time changed and science become more complicated in many aspects as funds, equipments and subspecilaized ares of reserach. Second of all, you can not do science alone as you need sometimes statisticains to help you, and no time to do everything alone, much compitation..

The only thing nowadays you see one author is that writing a review article but not original paper.

I am in the habit of writing as a single author. Well, I did not know that this is something important! In fact, I usually do not put my name in articles prepared by my research students.

May be because

1. the nature of the work need expertise of more than one person or

2. can share the workload.

3. mathematically with multiple author you can increase the number of out puts

But there is a problem with multiple author as was discussed earlier in another question regarding the order of authorship (which of course has arbitrary interpretation)

In structural biology current papers in major journals have a lot of data in them compared to earlier papers. Unless the work is strictly computational or mathematical it would be very hard for one person to generate the results needed for a high quality paper under current standards. On the other hand any of us could write as many one author papers as we wish for the multitude of new journals that are online only publications - I am less sure that they will be rigorous and read.

It may so happen that a single author paper may actually contain a theory challenging an existing theory. In such a case, the referees behave peculiarly; I have experienced this. What to do in such a situation, John?

Regarding Hemanta's point that single authors may have innovative ideas that challenge accepted beliefs - I'm sure this is true. Individuals are often more creative than groups whereas groups can provide organized efforts that allow amazing things to be accomplished collectively. I have challenged accepted ideas many times in my career but have added co-authors to provide the compelling data that supported eventual publication. The more original a result or idea the more compelling the data has to be before most scientists will accept this as possibly correct. This is where co-authors may pay off for you and your creativity for them.

A single authored paper means that the research is not shared by a team, or is not officially organized/funded by the employer (from my personal experience).

"Where are the first-authored papers? In what field do we see them most commonly?"

I think, in Mathematics and Theor.Physics, and in general in any Theoretical Science.

" Why is it becoming increasingly rare to see single-authored journal papers?"

I think, unfortunately, the reason is very often not from research, but from finance.

Researchers report by their publications: the more publications they have, the better.

When I was a student, professor in Nuclear Physics gave us to solve 400 tasks/problems for two weeks. How do the students from our group? We spread the problems between all students (who have been able to solve them), say 40 problems to one student, and then exchanged by solutions. In the modern "research world" the situation is very similar.

What has negative effect for science, as a whole.

In ideal, your salary should not be connected with number of your publications, and should be as more "socialistic" as possible. The ground (for administrators of funds and grants) that they support the most talented on the basis of a competition is an absurd, if to remember how worked Newton, Euler, Gauss, Maxwell, Mendeleev, etc. They would never be able to obtain a grant, because they would never be able to write a good report, as I afraid.

Dear Faysal,

It is tiring to work alone and so many people without ideas and hard work cannot exploit younger and dependent colleagues.  

Dear Ekaterina,

Look at my publications and you will find some. I am sorry this was not a publicity but the part of this discussion.

In my opinion, it is an outcome of publish or perish culture. Collaborative papers offer more productivity per author, contributing nothing to the papers. If one writes an article and add names of several others, others will also oblige.

My case is different from Hemanta. I never write a paper on my own. These are my colleagues and students who ask me to write a paper because they need it, so I oblige them taking their help.

Some of reasons include, shortening time availability, tough competition for journal papers and convergence of various knowledge and technologies etc.  Therefore, it is difficult for a single author to master various knowledge disciplines as well as technologies in order to write a full journal paper without collaboration. But still there are rare cases in which a single author is writing a full paper.   

All what you have said are true. Also the expansion of the internet and the growth of scientific methods to become more and more interdisciplinary and multi-purpose - a huge change from the past that makes publication a collaboration work. In the older times research was done predominantly on one specific field and single researchers were producing results - not any more. A mathematics person now does research with a physicist,  a biologist, economist, chemist, environmentalist, etc and even within the galaxy of mathematics, people across different categories  work collaboratively towards a combined results of  wider consequences. The internet and scientific forums such as RG are another big factors to create connections among  different researchers to share knowledge and information, start discussing about a concept or a  problem and thereby begin a joint work and get a  publication. 

Its a thing that in HRM we have a concept that group dynamics where it says that the contribution of one person is higher that the individual's member contribution in a  group so i obey that journals with more authors are preferred because to have more knowledge.

Dear Faysal, Clinical trials in medical science is alwas preferred with two or more researcher specially when we adapt blinding/ masking process. Even with survey type studies with multicenter it is always preferred combination of many researchers. This may be the reason why the articles are have more than one authors...

In mathematics and applied mathematics it is still possible to publish as a sole author. I just checked the latest issue of Mathematics of Operatons Research (the perhaps most theoretical journal in my field of mathematical optimization), where there are three such papers. But it is indeed less frequent to see papers with one sole author even in my field.

It differs from one area of research to another. Usually, nowadays, science is a team work and good collaboration is needed especially with high technology. Basically, no one can do good research alone and professional high work is needed with collaboration such as biology with statistics and technology and so on. However, on the other hand, review articles can sometimes be with one author, 

It became a tradition to write articles where many co-authors are present, in particular, if it is matter of research that covers many fields in science or engineering. It takes more time, efforts, knowledge etc. to write a solo paper. In a collaboration research problems can be solved easier.

I believe because nowadays a manuscript in order to be accepted to be published should be very reach and most of time it is somehow impossible to find a person who is expert in different aspects of a problem or research. Furthermore, it is easier to work in a team and research obstacles can be solved faster.

I believe that the community is made up of interactions between individuals and their environment. Research disciplines are communities and individuals, e.g. sole authors, are a component of those communities. Therefore, several authors could make perfect and integrated research. Of course, single-author papers could inspire multi-author debate, new research, and new collaborations that advance the field of research. However, it takes a long time & one thought in writing.