IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v109y2016i3d10.1007_s11192-016-2116-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are two authors better than one? Can writing in pairs affect the readability of academic blogs?

Author

Listed:
  • James Hartley

    (Keele University)

  • Guillaume Cabanac

    (University of Toulouse)

Abstract

The literature on academic writing suggests that writing in pairs leads to more readable papers than writing alone. We wondered whether academic blog posts written alone or in pairs would vary in style. We collected a corpus of 104 posts published with the LSE Impact of the Social Sciences blog. We found no differences in average sentence length between single- and co-authored posts. However, the posts written in pairs were slightly less readable than the single-authored posts, which challenges the current view on the advantages of writing in pairs.

Suggested Citation

  • James Hartley & Guillaume Cabanac, 2016. "Are two authors better than one? Can writing in pairs affect the readability of academic blogs?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(3), pages 2119-2122, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:109:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-016-2116-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-016-2116-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-016-2116-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-016-2116-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Limei Zhao & Qingpu Zhang & Liang Wang, 2014. "Benefit distribution mechanism in the team members’ scientific research collaboration network," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 100(2), pages 363-389, August.
    2. Thelwall, Mike & Sud, Pardeep, 2016. "National, disciplinary and temporal variations in the extent to which articles with more authors have more impact: Evidence from a geometric field normalised citation indicator," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 48-61.
    3. Ali Gazni & Mike Thelwall, 2014. "The long-term influence of collaboration on citation patterns," Research Evaluation, Oxford University Press, vol. 23(3), pages 261-271.
    4. Zhigang Hu & Chaomei Chen & Zeyuan Liu, 2014. "How are collaboration and productivity correlated at various career stages of scientists?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(2), pages 1553-1564, November.
    5. Frandsen, Tove Faber & Nicolaisen, Jeppe, 2010. "What is in a name? Credit assignment practices in different disciplines," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 4(4), pages 608-617.
    6. James Hartley, 2016. "Erratum to: Is time up for the Flesch measure of reading ease?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(3), pages 2329-2329, December.
    7. James Hartley & Guillaume Cabanac, 2015. "An academic odyssey: writing over time," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(3), pages 1073-1082, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Omar Mubin & Dhaval Tejlavwala & Mudassar Arsalan & Muneeb Ahmad & Simeon Simoff, 2018. "An assessment into the characteristics of award winning papers at CHI," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(2), pages 1181-1201, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anton Oleinik & Svetlana Kirdina-Chandler & Irina Popova & Tatyana Shatalova, 2017. "On academic reading: citation patterns and beyond," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(1), pages 417-435, October.
    2. Matthias Weber, 2016. "The Effects of Listing Authors in Alphabetical Order: A survey of the Empirical Evidence," Bank of Lithuania Occasional Paper Series 12, Bank of Lithuania.
    3. Rodrigo Costas & María Bordons, 2011. "Do age and professional rank influence the order of authorship in scientific publications? Some evidence from a micro-level perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 88(1), pages 145-161, July.
    4. Jinyuan Ma & Fan Jiang & Liujian Gu & Xiang Zheng & Xiao Lin & Chuanyi Wang, 2020. "Patterns of the Network of Cross-Border University Research Collaboration in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-17, August.
    5. Ju Wen & Lei Lei, 2022. "Adjectives and adverbs in life sciences across 50 years: implications for emotions and readability in academic texts," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(8), pages 4731-4749, August.
    6. Kim, Jinseok & Kim, Jinmo, 2015. "Rethinking the comparison of coauthorship credit allocation schemes," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 667-673.
    7. Rodrigo Dorantes-Gilardi & Aurora A. Ramírez-Álvarez & Diana Terrazas-Santamaría, 2023. "Is there a differentiated gender effect of collaboration with super-cited authors? Evidence from junior researchers in economics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(4), pages 2317-2336, April.
    8. João M. Fernandes & Paulo Cortez, 2020. "Alphabetic order of authors in scholarly publications: a bibliometric study for 27 scientific fields," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 125(3), pages 2773-2792, December.
    9. Helena Mihaljević-Brandt & Lucía Santamaría & Marco Tullney, 2016. "The Effect of Gender in the Publication Patterns in Mathematics," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(10), pages 1-23, October.
    10. Zhenyue Zhao & Xuelian Pan & Weina Hua, 2021. "Comparative analysis of the research productivity, publication quality, and collaboration patterns of top ranked library and information science schools in China and the United States," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(2), pages 931-950, February.
    11. Ali Gazni & Vincent Larivière & Fereshteh Didegah, 2016. "The effect of collaborators on institutions’ scientific impact," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 1209-1230, November.
    12. Malik Muhammad Saad Missen & Sajeeha Qureshi & Nadeem Salamat & Nadeem Akhtar & Hina Asmat & Mickaël Coustaty & V. B. Surya Prasath, 2020. "Scientometric analysis of social science and science disciplines in a developing nation: a case study of Pakistan in the last decade," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(1), pages 113-142, April.
    13. Xi Zhao & Li Li & Wei Xiao, 2023. "The diachronic change of research article abstract difficulty across disciplines: a cognitive information-theoretic approach," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-12, December.
    14. Martorell Cunil, Onofre & Otero González, Luis & Durán Santomil, Pablo & Mulet Forteza, Carlos, 2023. "How to accomplish a highly cited paper in the tourism, leisure and hospitality field," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).
    15. Zhe Cheng & Yihuan Zou & Yueyang Zheng, 2024. "A method for identifying different types of university research teams," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-15, December.
    16. James Hartley & Guillaume Cabanac, 2015. "An academic odyssey: writing over time," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 103(3), pages 1073-1082, June.
    17. Gerardo Urrutia Sánchez & Lilian Prado & Wolfgang Bietenholz, 2018. "Theoretical high energy physcis in Latin America from 1990 to 2012: a statistical study," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(1), pages 125-146, July.
    18. Waltman, Ludo, 2016. "A review of the literature on citation impact indicators," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 365-391.
    19. Adam Emmer, 2019. "The careers behind and the impact of solo author articles in Nature and Science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 120(2), pages 825-840, August.
    20. Hagen, Nils T., 2013. "Harmonic coauthor credit: A parsimonious quantification of the byline hierarchy," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 784-791.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:109:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-016-2116-x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.