How many researchers does it take to publish an article in top journals in neuroscience and psychology? Manually coding 42,580 articles spanning 1879-2021 from 32 journals, we examined the evolution of authorship size and its rate of change. Moreover, we assessed the driving forces behind these changes. We found that, starting from the 1950s but not earlier, the average authorship size per article in neuroscience and psychology has increased exponentially, growing by 50% and 31% over the last decade and reaching a record high of 10.4 and 4.8 authors in 2021, respectively. Single-authored articles have become a rarity today, particularly in primary research articles: 1.7% in neuroscience and 2.2% in psychology in 2019-2021 (vs. 5.7% and 11.2% in review articles). With the withering of sole authors rises a new type of authorship, group authors (e.g., a consortium). Group authorship was rare before 2000, but in 2019-2021, it appeared in 4.1% of articles in neuroscience, mostly in genetics, neuroimaging, and disease-outnumbering single-authored articles for the first time-and 0.7% in psychology, mostly in developmental and clinical research. The exponential inflation in authorship size could not be attributed to behaviors of professional editors in profit-oriented journals but aligns with a hybrid epistemic-behavioral-cultural account-an account that integrates multidimensional factors, including increased research complexity, the benefits of collaboration, the rise of government-funded research, changing norms in authorship practices, and biased incentives in evaluation. These findings suggest troubling implications for research reproducibility, innovations, equity/diversity, and ethics, calling for policy deliberations to address potential negative ramifications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

---

从 20 世纪 50 年代到 2020 年代，神经科学和心理学领域的作者数量呈指数级增长。

在神经科学和心理学的顶级期刊上发表一篇文章需要多少研究人员？我们对 1879 年至 2021 年 32 种期刊的 42,580 篇文章进行了手动编码，研究了作者规模的演变及其变化率。此外，我们评估了这些变化背后的驱动力。我们发现，从 20 世纪 50 年代开始，但不更早，神经科学和心理学领域每篇文章的平均作者人数呈指数级增长，在过去十年中分别增长了 50% 和 31%，并在 2021 年达到历史新高，分别有 10.4 名和 4.8 名作者。分别。如今，单人撰写的文章已经很少见，特别是在初级研究文章中：2019-2021 年，神经科学领域的作者为 1.7%，心理学领域的作者为 2.2%（而评论文章中的这一比例为 5.7% 和 11.2%）。随着单一作者的衰落，出现了一种新型的作者身份，即团体作者（例如联盟）。2000 年之前，集体作者很少见，但在 2019-2021 年，它出现在神经科学领域的 4.1% 文章中，主要是在遗传学、神经影像学和疾病领域，首次超过了单独作者的文章数量，而在心理学领域则占 0.7%，主要是在遗传学、神经影像学和疾病领域。发育和临床研究。作者数量的指数级膨胀不能归因于以利润为导向的期刊中专业编辑的行为，而是与一种混合的认知-行为-文化账户相一致——这种账户整合了多维因素，包括研究复杂性的增加、合作的好处、政府资助的研究的兴起、作者身份实践规范的变化以及评估中的有偏见的激励措施。这些发现对研究的可重复性、创新、公平/多样性和道德产生了令人不安的影响，需要进行政策审议以解决潜在的负面影响。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2023 APA，保留所有权利）。