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‘Big team’ science challenges us to reconsider authorship

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From Nature Human Behaviour

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‘Big team’ science challenges researchers to revisit three issues around authorship: (1) how to define authorship-worthy contributions, (2) how contributions should be documented and (3) how disagreements among large teams of coauthors should be handled. We propose steps that the community can take to resolve these issues.

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Acknowledgements

This work was inspired by a panel discussion that also included S. Kerridge and R. Thibault. M. Kovacz also gave feedback on an earlier draft. N.A.C. and M.C.F. were supported by the John Templeton Foundation (grant no. 62295). The funder had no role in the preparation of the manuscript or decision to publish.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Nicholas A. Coles & Heidi A. Baumgartner

  2. School of Psychology & Neuroscience, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

    Lisa M. DeBruine

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Flavio Azevedo

  4. Department of Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Michael C. Frank

Authors
  1. Nicholas A. Coles
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  2. Lisa M. DeBruine
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  3. Flavio Azevedo
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  4. Heidi A. Baumgartner
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  5. Michael C. Frank
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Correspondence to Nicholas A. Coles.

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Coles, N.A., DeBruine, L.M., Azevedo, F. et al. ‘Big team’ science challenges us to reconsider authorship. Nat Hum Behav 7, 665–667 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01572-2

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