Multiauthorship, an Indicator of the Trend Toward Team Research in Ecology

Older scientists are aware that before World War II most research was published by single authors, whereas since then the trend has been toward team research and multiauthored papers. We have investigated this trend in ecology by counting the number of research articles with 1 author, and with 2, 3, 4, 5, and more than 5 authors, in the British Journal of Ecology and the American Ecology since the latter began in 1920. They exhibit similar patterns, which we show decade by decade.