Solo versus collaborative writing: Discrepancies in the use of tables and graphs in academic articles

Abstract

The number of authors collaborating to write scientific articles has been increasing steadily, and with this collaboration, other factors have also changed, such as the length of articles and the number of citations. However, little is known about potential discrepancies in the use of tables and graphs between single and collaborating authors. In this article, we ask whether multiauthor articles contain more tables and graphs than single‐author articles, and we studied 5,180 recent articles published in six science and social sciences journals. We found that pairs and multiple authors used significantly more tables and graphs than single authors. Such findings indicate that there is a greater emphasis on the role of tables and graphs in collaborative writing, and we discuss some of the possible causes and implications of these findings.