Policy: Limiting the number of authors arbitrarily.
Aim: Conserve journal space.
"The reason for selecting these maximums, which are admittedly arbitrary, is that it is difficult to imagine that more than 12 people can have the comprehensive intellectual involvement necessary to fulfill the criteria for authorship" (
Kassirer 1991).
Outcome: Arbitrary constraint later reversed.
"By extension of this reasoning, it is logical that those who meet the criteria for authorship not be excluded as authors. However, our current editorial policy limits to 12 the number of authors whose names can be printed under the title of an article. With advances in medical research, investigators with a broader range of skills than were required in the past are often needed to take new ideas from the bench to the bedside and to conduct large clinical trials. For this reason, we are modifying our policy on the number of authors we will list" (Drazen 2002)
Our approach: We encourage collaboration and in fact were built to facilitate it. We think collaboration will be key towards the advancement of research and because we're a web-native platform, constraints on space are not a concern.