Writing a massively multi‐authored paper: Overcoming barriers to meaningful authorship for all

The value of large-scale collaborations for solving complex problems is widely recognized, but many barriers hinder meaningful authorship all on the resulting multi-author publications. Because professional benefits arise from authorship, much literature this topic has focused cheating, conflict and effort documentation. However, approaches specifically recognizing creatively overcoming to have received little attention. We developed an inclusive approach arising 15 years experience coordinating publication over 100 papers a long-term, international collaboration hundreds scientists. This method sharing paper initially as storyboard with clear expectations, assignments deadlines fosters communication creates unambiguous opportunities authors contribute intellectually. By documenting contributions through multi-step process, ensures engagement by each author listed publication. perception that co-authors large publications not meaningfully contributed underlies widespread institutional bias against multi-authored papers, disincentivizing despite their recognized advancing knowledge. Our identifies overcomes key contributions, protecting even massively