How many authors can fit in a paper? 2

In case you don't remember this post, here is my rule of thumb to decide the maximum number of authors of an academic paper: "The list of authors should not be longer than the abstract."

A recently published paper in genomics with more than 1,000 authors has sparked a discussion about the meaning of authorship over the past few months. Now we have a new record!

A physics paper with 5,154 authors has — as far as anyone knows — broken the record for the largest number of contributors to a single research article. Only the first nine pages in the 33-page article, published on 14 May in Physical Review Letters, describe the research itself — including references. The other 24 pages list the authors and their institutions.

Clearly, I don't have much influence in the academic world. I hope at least they have included the authors' names in the correct order.

Credit: Jorge Cham/PhD Comics

For the pointers I thank Carl Schmertmann and Kyle Walker.