My publication history crosses disciplines and the multi-author papers range range everywhere from two to thirty-two. Across all of these publications, I have seen two main modes of multi-author paper-writing, which I will call "pedagogical" and "collaborative."

• Collaborative is the typical mode of writing that I have seen in scientific collaborations. Authors generally tend to fall into three rough categories:

  • Primary authors is one or more people who take responsibility for organizing the writing of the paper, and who produce the vast bulk of the text.
  • Secondary authors contribute specific pieces to the writing at the direction of the primary authors, most often figures, examples, and experimental methods.
  • Tertiary authors are people whose technical contributions rise to the standards of authorship for the field, but who are not needed to contribute any writing. This is highly field-specific. These range from common in experimental fields like biosciences or experimental physics to practically unheard of and possibly unethical in more theoretical and mathematical fields.

  In fields where author order matters, the category of author and their responsibilities tend to closely mirror their order in the paper, according to the customs of the field. Here, the primary authors tend to form a writing plan, often dividing responsibility for sections, but sometimes having one do a first rough pass and then "passing the token" around for further refinement. Towards the end of the writing, when the secondary authors' pieces are integrated and the primary authors are satisfied, the paper will typically be sent out for commentary and feedback from all authors, and after a few further iterations there are no significant objections, the primary authors are satisfied with the paper, and they submit.

• Pedagogical, on the other hand, is when you have a clear split between junior and senior authors, where the junior is a student or postdoc and the writing of the paper is also being used by the senior(s) as a part of their training. In this case, the text is typically generated primarily by the junior author (either one section at a time or all at once), and then submitted to the senior for feedback and instructions. This may go on for many iterations. Eventually, if there is a fixed deadline, or if things are dragging on too long, the seniors may seize control and "finish" the paper between themselves in collaborative mode.

  Occasionally, there may be more than one junior author, in which case the partition of their responsibilities are typically dictated by the senior. Likewise there may also be secondary and tertiary authors, just as in collaborative authorship.

My publication history crosses disciplines and the multi-author papers range range everywhere from two to thirty-two authors. Across all of these publications, I have seen two main modes of multi-author paper-writing, which I will call "collaborative" and "pedagogical."

• Collaborative is the typical mode of writing that I have seen in scientific collaborations. Authors generally tend to fall into three rough categories:

  • Primary authors are one or more people who take responsibility for organizing the writing of the paper, and who produce the vast bulk of the text.
  • Secondary authors contribute specific pieces to the writing at the direction of the primary authors, most often figures, examples, and experimental methods.
  • Tertiary authors are people whose technical contributions rise to the standards of authorship for the field, but who are not needed to contribute any writing. This is highly field-specific. These range from common in experimental fields like biosciences or experimental physics to practically unheard of and possibly unethical in more theoretical and mathematical fields.

  In fields where author order matters, the category of author and their responsibilities tend to closely mirror their order in the paper, according to the customs of the field. In formulating the manuscript, the primary authors tend to form a writing plan, often dividing responsibility for sections, but sometimes having one do a first rough pass and then "passing the token" around for further refinement. Towards the end of the writing, when the secondary authors' pieces are integrated and the primary authors are satisfied, the paper will typically be sent out for commentary and feedback from all authors, and after a few further iterations there are no significant objections, the primary authors are satisfied with the paper, and they submit.

• Pedagogical, on the other hand, is when you have a clear split between junior and senior authors, where the junior is a student or postdoc and the writing of the paper is also being used by the senior(s) as a part of their training. In this case, the text is typically generated primarily by the junior author (either one section at a time or all at once), and then submitted to the senior for feedback and instructions. This may go on for many iterations. Eventually, if there is a fixed deadline, or if things are dragging on too long, the seniors may seize control and "finish" the paper between themselves in collaborative mode.

  Occasionally, there may be more than one junior author, in which case the partition of their responsibilities are typically dictated by the senior. Likewise there may also be secondary and tertiary authors, just as in collaborative authorship.