Early-career scientific achievement and patterns of authorship: the mixed blessings of publication leadership and collaboration

Bibliometric indices of scientific achievement for a cohort of 85 social psychologists at 10 years post-PhD were correlated with their patterns of authorship (i.e. their typical number of co-authors and position in the authorship order). Career publication quantity, average journal impact factor, and impact (total citations, h-index and most-cited article) were associated with having higher proportions of publications with multiple co-authors and lower proportions of solo- and first-authored publications. Curvilinear associations were found, with publication quantity and impact maximized at intermediate levels of first-authorship and multiple-authorship. Within scientific careers there may be an optimal distribution of publication leadership and scientific collaboration.