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I am a Master's student, and I'm nearly done with my first paper draft. Although the paper I am currently working on will be published with my advisor, I want to work in research areas that my advisor is not interested in. I can publish on my own but most papers I have reviewed have multiple authors. Will submission of a paper with only my name on it affect the chances of the paper being accepted? How can I go about finding like-minded people to work with?

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    If you do succeed in publishing a single-author paper, this will be more impressive to future recruiters than a multiple-authors paper, so this may be worth the effort.
    – Sylvain Ribault
    Commented Dec 17, 2019 at 8:36

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Will submission of a paper with only my name on it affect the chances of the paper being accepted?

No. Reputable journals do not intentionally make publication decisions based on who the author(s) are.

That said, getting feedback from colleagues can help you improve your work before you submit it.

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    Reputable journals do not intentionally make publication decisions based on who the author(s) are. That's what everyone wants to believe, but is not true in general. Most of the time it's subconscious bias, but there are even some journals that make it explicit that they're considering the author's identity, e.g. PNAS.
    – Allure
    Commented Dec 15, 2019 at 8:22
  • @Allure You may have missed the word "intentionally." PNAS may be an exception, I haven't published there.
    – Anonymous Physicist
    Commented Dec 15, 2019 at 9:27
  • pnas.org/page/authors/journal-policies "A member of the National Academy of Sciences may contribute up to 4 of her or his own manuscripts for publication in PNAS each year ..." which isn't skipping peer review, but is a fast track. Also, there are definitely papers for which the editor thinks "I'm not sure about this, but if [big name scientist] is willing to put his/her name on this paper I'll err on the side of publication". Schon scandal papers are an example, the recent LB-1 paper probably falls into this category as well.
    – Allure
    Commented Dec 15, 2019 at 10:21

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