The way scientists are listed as authors on research papers may be stifling collaboration

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2026-01-07 11:01

Australia; VIC

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash - Story by Lyndal Byford, Australian Science Media Centre

The conventions around the way scientists are listed as authors on research papers may be stifling collaboration, according to Australian research. Science papers tend to either list authors in order of contribution, alphabetically, or place the senior researcher last, but this research suggests that listing people in a way that doesn't account for their contributions could impede people's willingness to collaborate. They say alphabetical or senior-author-last naming conventions can lead to ‘main contributor resentment’ when exceptional work goes unrecognised, and ‘second contributor resentment’ when comparable efforts receive unequal credit. These widely adopted practices could potentially be reducing overall scientific productivity, they conclude.

News release

From: The Royal Society

The Evolution of Scientific Credit: When Authorship Norms Impede Collaboration

Royal Society Open Science

Modern science depends on collaboration, but dividing credit among co-authors creates thorny problems. Author-order conventions clarify contributions: some fields rank by effort, others alphabetically, or place senior researchers last. Our mathematical models explain why contribution-blind norms like “senior-author-last” arose in laboratory sciences, where principal investigators manage many projects and large budgets. Yet the same norms systematically discourage collaboration compared to contribution-based systems. Common authorship practices across economics, mathematics, and lab sciences may thus suppress valuable partnerships – a fixable institutional friction hiding in plain sight

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Research The Royal Society, Web page Please link to the article in online versions of your report (the URL will go live after the embargo ends).

Journal/
conference: Royal Society Open Science

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Monash University

Funder: This study was supported by Australian Research Council, DP190100041.

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