Publish, Pair(ish)? Navigating Co-Authorship Challenges and Benefits in Anthropology and Cognate Disciplines

Scientific authorship has been long imagined as a solo pursuit, bolstered by romanticized ideals of the genius scholar who toils away in solitude with quill, pipe, and armchair in pursuit of Eureka! moments. In recent years, however, co-authorship has established itself as standard practice across many disciplines, and has since been shown to frequently result in higher-quality publications and broader intellectual and societal impact (Didegah and Thelwall 2013; Abramo and D'Angelo 2015). Yet the turn to collaborative research and writing in anthropology and other SSH fields has been slower. In fields such as anthropology or or literary studies, co-authoring has long been a contentious practice, particularly when it comes to hiring and promotion evaluation processes, which traditionally favour single-authored work. This creates substantial barriers to multi-author research and to career advancement for those who dare to embrace it. Many anthropologists are ill-equipped for the ensuing challenges. In this didactic paper, we propose concrete ways for SSH researchers to maximize the benefits of co-authorship, while mitigating the negative consequences often associated with it. We show how collaborative research and writing across disciplines, when undertaken ethically and critically, fosters exciting and ground-breaking research, and contributes to a more inclusive research culture in which scholars are valued and evaluated in just ways. The paper seeks to challenge entrenched institutional and disciplinary biases against novel and productive modes of researching and writing and propose modes of engaging in impactful forms of scientific research and dissemination, and societal impact.