When ScienceWatch last visited the topic of multiauthor papers back in 2007, the signs were unclear as to whether the trend of reports listing untold hundreds of authors was perhaps showing signs of leveling off in the middle of the last decade. Thomson Reuters
With this latest update, we can now answer with a resounding “No!” In fact, recent years have seen a steep increase in the number of papers with authors in excess of 50, and a particularly notable spike in reports whose author counts exceed 1,000 and more. To borrow a term credited to Indiana University information scientist Blaise Cronin, “hyperauthorship” would seem to be flourishing—driven in particular, as we’ll see, by an international undertaking in high-energy physics that recently made world headlines.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.
From the UC Berkeley Library The UC Berkeley Library is full of stories — and not just the ones that line its shelves. The facts you’ll find here are at ...
From The Chicago Tribune: Last week, city and Chicago Public Library officials declared Chicago a sanctuary city for those stories, by establishing “Book Sanctuaries” across the city’s 77 distinct community ...
From Penn State: Penn State University Libraries has expanded its robust scholarly research potential of one of America’s foremost 20th-century writers through the acquisition of the Toby and Betty Bruce ...
From Politico: Far from the trenches in states like Florida and Texas, organizations in deep-blue New York are stepping into the fray by directly lending 25,000 books to non-residents since spring, ...
From the Associated Press: A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were ...
From a ULC Release: The Urban Libraries Council’s new member tool — the Business Value Calculator — provides public libraries with a concrete way to measure and evaluate its contributions ...
From an Ithaka S+R Post by Kurtis Tanaka: As Ithaka S+R’s research has well documented, people in prison have profound information needs and suffer from an equally profound lack of resources ...
DeepMind’s New Chatbot Uses Google Searches Plus Humans to Give Better Answers (via MIT Technology Review) Inside the 15,000-Strong Record Collection at Hawaii’s State Archives (via Vinyl Factory) South Carolina: ...
Direct to the Full Text of the Resolution Introduced by Congressman Raskin 7 pages; PDF. From PEN America: With free expression and the freedom to read being undermined in America’s ...
From a Joint News Release: Paolo Manghi, CTO of OpenAIRE, is co-leading an international team led by University of North Texas that has been awarded a $1.2 million grant from the Mellon Foundation ...
From ALA (via YouTube): R.L. Stine has been writing scary stories for more than 30 years. His books have sold more than 400 million copies and have been translated into ...
From a DPLA Announcement Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is pleased to announce the release of January 6th on the Record: The Investigation into the Attack on the U.S. Capitol, ...
