Being an effective co-author: how to write collaboratively

In the sciences, our work is rarely done alone. We stand on the shoulders of giants, but in addition to that, there are often many authors contributing to a single document. Whether you are writing a book chapter, a journal article, or a dissertation, it is important to work efficiently with your collaborators and avoid conflicts. Learning to manage this process is a crucial part of the graduate student learning curve, and if you find yourself feeling lost or frustrated, you are not alone! This article will offer some insights and strategies for co-authoring. The material included here was part of a workshop for McGill’s writing group Graphos; we encourage you to browse the Graphos website for other high-quality writing help!

Authorship

In academic journals in the life sciences, though practices vary, it is common to have one primary author, any number of secondary authors, and a last author, who is usually a supervisor or the person whose grant funded the research. Writing with multiple coauthors allows for a distributed workload, brings in scholars with different areas of expertise, and guarantees that the document undergoes thorough editing.

Different academic journals have their own requirements for authorship; if in doubt, consult the author information page of the journal your group is aiming for. If you haven’t decided on a journal yet, or if you are writing a document for which guidelines aren’t available, there a good set of rules in the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ (ICMJE) Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals. According to these criteria, authors must meet four conditions:

• Substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, and
• Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, and
• Final approval of the version to be published, and
• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

As a comparison, the Ecological Society of America (ESA) code of ethics guidelines are a little more relaxed, stating that authorship can legitimately be claimed if authors meet either the first OR second points.

Authorship should be established as close to the beginning of a project as possible in order to avoid later conflicts. In general, the order of authorship should be intuitive. If it is unclear, especially if there are multiple candidates for first or last author, you should not hesitate to discuss it explicitly.

The first author has the most responsibility during manuscript creation, and is often also the corresponding author, charged with responding to inquiries about the work after it is published. Having two “first authors” is sometimes possible, but in the end, one person’s name will have to appear first on the page! Secondary authors are usually listed in decreasing order of involvement. Since they bear less responsibility, the secondary authors should be prepared to allow the first author to shape the document stylistically and make some executive decisions. This dynamic can change, however, if any of the secondary authors are in a supervisory role or otherwise more experienced than the first author. If you are part of a large group or consortium, the group can sometimes be cited instead of listing all the individuals in that group.

Developing a workflow

The writing process consists of a number of phases, and there are different organizational strategies you can employ with your coauthors. Some key phases, as identified by Ede and Lunsford’s 1990 analysis of collaborative writing practices are: (1) generating ideas, note-taking, and organizational planning, (2) drafting, (3), compiling (if necessary), and (4) revising and editing. The drafting phase is often the most work-intensive: if one person is doing all of the drafting, this person will likely be the first author.

Ede and Lunsford studied how different authors went about their collaboration and identified different workflow methods, some of which are listed below:

While there is variability in the type of strategy used, some are more common than others. For example, Ede and Lunsford found that 31% of authors employed method 3, while only 3% employed method 5. Technology could also change these strategies: Method 7 (the dictation method), for example, is probably less popular today than it was in 1990 when the study was conducted.

Writing habits

What factors should you take into account when choosing a collaboration method? This is where writing habits come in. Do you and your collaborators work best alone, or with others? Do some of you like completing a task in one condensed time period, or do you prefer to break up the work into smaller pieces and spread them out? Are there any significant differences in writing style between group members? Taking these things into account will help you narrow down the kind of strategy you want to use.

Document control methods

In addition to knowing your collaborators, it helps to set some document control methods ahead of time. Some possibilities are: (1) electronic tracking— e.g. Microsoft word with track changes, Google docs, Git, etc.; (2) paper copies with written edits; (3) in-person (or video-conference) meeting and discussion. Of course, these can be combined in different ratios, depending on how many collaborators you have, their physical locations, and their writing styles. If edits are happening simultaneously, you might want to think about how you will keep track of comments and multiple versions of the same manuscript. If edits are happening sequentially, work to find the optimal order of editors and avoid bouncing back and forth too much, since each of these exchanges will cost you time.

Develop a realistic time frame

Avoid underestimating the time a collaborative writing project will take; this will only lead to frustration. To gain a clearer picture of your timeline, calculate the each phase individually. For example, let’s say that we are working on a document using strategy 2 above (group planning, single person drafting, group edits). We plan for a few initial meetings to nail down the structure and ideas in the paper; let’s say we decide to have 3 meetings, each one week apart. After that, the person writing the first draft will need 5 weeks to complete it. We will have two rounds of edits, each round consisting of group comments on the manuscript (2 weeks) and revision based on these comments (2 weeks). Here is our calculation:

(3 x 1 week) + 5 weeks + (2 x (2+2 weeks)) =

3 weeks + 5 weeks + 8 weeks = 16 weeks

Total time: about 4 months

Work backwards from a deadline if you have one in mind (this works well for conference abstracts, for example). It can help to ask your coauthors ahead of time if they will be able to work on the manuscript around the date when you plan to send it to them. That way, they can organize their schedules accordingly. If there isn’t a deadline, have some criteria in mind to decide when a manuscript should be ready to send out. You don’t want to be stuck in an endless cycle of edits!

Conclusion

Working on a collaborative writing project can be daunting, but it is also very rewarding, and it is an integral part of working in the life sciences. Equipped with these tools, you should be better prepared for your next project. Don’t forget to check out Graphos for workshops, classes and peer writing groups to help you hone your craft. Happy writing!

Sources/Continued Reading:

• Ede, L. and Lunsford, A. Singular Texts/Plural Authors: Perspectives on Collaborative Writing. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 1990.
• Rimmershaw R. Collaborative Writing Practices and Writing Support Technologies, pages 15-28. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 1992.
• Biological Monitoring Team. Guidance Regarding Authorship of Papers and Products from Projects with Multiple Collaborators. US Fish and Wildlife Service, 2007.
• Posner R. and Baecker R. How People Write Together, pages 239-250. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, 1993.
• Dillon A. How Collaborative is Collaborative Writing? An Analysis of the Production of Two Technical Reports., pages 69-86. Springer-Verlag, London, 1993.

Bio: Anastasia Sares

I’m a PhD candidate in Neuroscience at McGill. I love everything auditory— music, language, perception, and production. Hailing from Colorado, I came to McGill to study auditory processing in specific populations, like musicians and people with a stutter.