Big fall in US non-collaborative papers, as China’s tally rises

US authors appear to be moving towards more collaborative work, while single-institution papers still make a significant contribution in China.

23 January 2024

Jose A. Bernat Bacete/Getty Images

By tracking institutional affiliations on papers in Nature Index journals, the database can track the contributions of institutions, countries and regions to high-quality research through Share, a fractional count of authorships on each paper.

But the data also allow a deeper analysis: how different types of collaborative papers are changing over time. One trend seems clear: the number of papers produced without any institutional collaboration in the United States, and other developed research systems, is on the wane.

For the United States, the Share from these non-collaborative papers — those authored by researchers from a single main institution — fell by 1,591 between 2017 and 2022. The decline contrasts sharply with China, where the contribution from such papers rose by a Share of 2,282 over the same period.

The figures point to a shift in US-author preferences towards more collaborative work, even though there has been an overall decline in output for the United States in the Nature Index over the past few years (with China overtaking it for Share for the first time in 2022.

Overall, the data, which were extracted as part of a wider analysis for the Nature Index Rising Stars 2023 supplement, show that the United States’ Share in the index fell by 2,391 from 2017 to 2022. Almost 20% of this decline (454) was due to its drop in Share on internationally co-authored papers, while its Share on domestic collaborations fell by 346. But it was single-institution papers where Share fell the most.

China’s Share rose by almost 10,100 over the period, but by far the biggest contribution to this change was authorships on domestic collaborations, which represented a Share of 5,851. International collaborations involving China-based authors contributed a Share rise of 1,967.

Among the leading 10 countries in the Nature Index, seven have recorded declines in single-institution papers. In terms of Share, Germany had the next biggest decline, recording a drop in single-institution output of 348 between 2017 and 2022.

Lone-author limits

If such single-institution papers are falling out of favour among US researchers — and those in other countries — it could be related to a preference for more collaborative and interdisciplinary work to address increasingly complex global challenges.

The reasons for the different collaborative patterns seen in China are likely to include the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on international partnerships and changing domestic incentives around how research is produced and published.

A subset of papers produced by researchers from one institution are articles with just one author, but perhaps it’s up for debate whether any decline in these papers in the United States and elsewhere would be ‘good’ for science.

In a blog post by Manu Saunders, an ecologist at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, Saunders argues that single-author papers are particularly important for early career researchers (ECRs), because of the skills required to produce solo work:

“One of the most common skills highlighted in job advertisements, both academic and non-academic, is the ‘ability to work both independently and in a team’. This is a key reason ECRs should be encouraged to include a single-author paper in their publication record – a mix of both single and multi-author papers demonstrates a researcher’s ability to conceptualise, analyse, and justify their research, as both an individual and a collaborator.”

Saunders also argues that having a solo project to "tinker away at" while working on larger projects can provide important motivation for young researchers, as it allows them to dedicate some time to niche interests.

Whether or not the overall decline in single-institution papers will continue apace is yet to be seen. In a few years from now, we may see more clearly how the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which on the one hand necessitated international collaboration, but on the other made partnerships across borders more difficult, affected such articles.