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A cast of thousands: Co-authorship and sub-authorship collaboration in the twentieth century as manifested in the scholarly journal literature of psychology and philosophy.
Citation:Cronin, B., Shaw, D., & La Barre, K. (2003). A cast of thousands: Co-authorship and sub-authorship collaboration in the twentieth century as manifested in the scholarly journal literature of psychology and philosophy. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 54(9), 855-871.
We chronicle the use of acknowledgements in twentieth century scholarship by analyzing and classifying more than 4,500 specimens covering a 100-year period. Our results show that the intensity of acknowledgment varies by discipline, reflecting differences in prevailing socio-cognitive structures and work practices. We demonstrate that the acknowledgment has gradually established itself as a constitutive element of academic writing, one that provides a revealing insight into the nature and extent of sub-authorship collaboration. Complementary data on rates of co-authorship are also presented to highlight the growing importance of collaboration and the increasing division of labor in contemporary research and scholarship.