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‘Big team’ science challenges us to reconsider authorship

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‘Big team’ science challenges researchers to revisit three issues around authorship: (1) how to define authorship-worthy contributions, (2) how contributions should be documented and (3) how disagreements among large teams of coauthors should be handled. We propose steps that the community can take to resolve these issues.

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Acknowledgements

This work was inspired by a panel discussion that also included S. Kerridge and R. Thibault. M. Kovacz also gave feedback on an earlier draft. N.A.C. and M.C.F. were supported by the John Templeton Foundation (grant no. 62295). The funder had no role in the preparation of the manuscript or decision to publish.

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Correspondence to Nicholas A. Coles.

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Coles, N.A., DeBruine, L.M., Azevedo, F. et al. ‘Big team’ science challenges us to reconsider authorship. Nat Hum Behav 7, 665–667 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01572-2

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