Multiauthor

Multiauthor refers to a work produced by more than one author. It describes collaborative authorship across individuals, organizations, or disciplines, often to combine complementary expertise or to address broader topics than a single author could cover. Multiauthor projects are common in academic journals, reference works, textbooks, and professional writing, and they also occur in fiction, software documentation, and policy reports.

In scholarly publishing, author order and contribution are often governed by field-specific conventions. In many sciences, the first author is the primary contributor, and the last author is typically the senior investigator; middle authors are listed by level of involvement or alphabetical order in some cases. Some journals require a formal statement of each author's contributions.

To manage collaboration, teams use project management and version control, and may adopt a contributor taxonomy such as CRediT, which defines roles like conceptualization, methodology, data curation, writing, and supervision. Equal contributions are sometimes indicated with a shared first authorship note. Software tools and platforms support simultaneous editing, change tracking, and reproducibility.

Ethical considerations include preventing ghost authorship (uncredited contributions) and guest authorship (credit for non-contributions). Clear criteria for authorship, timely communication, and use of identifiers such as ORCID iD help resolve disputes and improve attribution. Citation practices typically list all named authors and reference alternatives like et al. for long author lists.

Overall, multiauthor work enables breadth and rigor but requires explicit governance, transparent contributions, and careful coordination to ensure accurate credit and accountability.