Lonesome Cowboy, Seeks Posse
Collaboration and its Discontents
Scholarly articles often have a long list of authors. When is collaboration a boon, and when is it a bust?
Early in your publishing career, you may find yourself in a collaborative authoring relationship. For example, graduate advisors invite their advisees and students to participate in research projects and publish the results. Junior faculty may collaborate with formal or informal mentors who are more senior to them.
Collaboration offers several important benefits:
- Shared responsibility
- Opportunity to publish with more experienced scholars
- Greater creativity within the working group
Collaboration also has pitfalls:
- Not all collaborators do their fair share of the work
- Lots of opinions can make it difficult to get things done
- Bibliographic listings name only the first one, two or three authors (depending on the citation format), diluting the value of the publication for those who aren’t listed first.
Despite the difficulties, co-authorship can be a highly stimulating process and a good balance to the lonelier aspects of scholarly work.

