The trend toward multiple authorship in social work: A British and US comparison

Perceptions of the Trend of Collaborative Publications: Results from a Survey of Criminal Justice and Criminology Department Chairs

“…Endersby (1996) found that that multi-authored research articles have become common, but his sample of social science journals did not include any from criminology or criminal justice. Gelman and Gibelman (1999) and Gibelman and Gelman (2000) found about the same trend in an examination of social work journals. Fisher, Vander Ven, Cobane, Cullen, and Williams (1998) on the other hand, analyzed 11,261 peer-reviewed articles in ten top-tier sociology, political science, and criminology and criminal justice journals, from 1964 to 1996.…”

“…First-authorship can have an impact on one's attractiveness for hiring, promotion, and tenure (Orrick & Weir, 2011). Presumably, the first author contributes the most to a project (Gibelman & Gelman, 2000;Orrick & Weir, 2011). In criminology and criminal justice journals, merit-based, as opposed to arbitrary, author-ordering seems to be the norm (Sever, 2005).…”

“…Articles often require multiple areas of expertise, so it makes sense that those with different areas of expertise would team up to produce one article. Also, in some cases, collaborative authorship is the result of successful mentoring of graduate students and junior faculty (Endersby, 1996;Gibelman & Gelman, 2000). The growth in the number of scholars during the late-twentieth century created a larger pool of potential collaborators (Fisher et al, 1998), and advancements in communication technology make it more possible for authors to collaborate (Fisher et al, 1998;Sever, 2005) including those across disciplines (Tewksbury & Mustaine, 2011).…”

“…It seems then that multi-authorship has the potential benefit of increasing the quality, not just the quantity, of research and publications (Endersby, 1996;Fisher et al, 1998;Gibelman & Gelman, 2000). Assessing the quality of multi-authored publications is more difficult however.…”

“…The growth in the number of scholars during the late-twentieth century created a larger pool of potential collaborators (Fisher et al, 1998), and advancements in communication technology make it more possible for authors to collaborate (Fisher et al, 1998;Sever, 2005) including those across disciplines (Tewksbury & Mustaine, 2011). Collaboration may also lead to more projects that bring grant money and recognition to the institutions with which authors are affiliated (Gibelman & Gelman, 2000).…”