The fun process of developing your own ideas.
Scientific collaboration is extremely important, but there is nothing wrong with writing papers by yourself. Over the years, I have published several single-author papers and I can highly recommend it. In this short blog post, I will share my joy and experiences with writing single-author papers.
Speedy Publications
A big reason for writing papers by myself is speed. The scientific process from idea to manuscript to publication is glacially slow. Working alone can definitely speed up the process. One of my favorite papers – on the concept of ghost introgression – was written in a couple of weeks. During one of my regular lunch meetings with Per Alström at Uppsala University (Sweden), we discussed the idea of detecting ancient gene flow from extinct species into extant ones. I found this process so fascinating that I performed a quick literature search, read the papers that popped up and outlined a potential manuscript. A few months later, the paper appeared in the journal BioEssays.
Writing a paper by yourself also allows you to develop and share your own ideas. In a paper with multiple authors, it is not always clear who came up with the main idea or who took the lead. A single-author paper highlights your contribution to the field (although you always build on the work of other scientists). I have a few papers that nicely reflect my original ideas, such as a proposal on how to discriminate between two types of hybrid speciation (Ecology and Evolution) and a scoring scheme to assess the reliability of hybrid records (Ornithology Research).
Not Isolated
Developing a single-author paper does not mean that you work alone. You can still discuss your ideas with colleagues and friends. Indeed, I have asked several colleagues to provide comments on early versions of my manuscripts, including these reviews in Evolutionary Applications and Journal of Ornithology (you can check the acknowledgements if you are curious to know who helped me). In addition, you can always contact experts in the field for particular questions. You would be surprised how helpful other scientists can be.
Importantly, you should be active in the scientific community and remain open to criticism. It is fine to develop and defend your own ideas, but do not become isolated. I have come across a few examples of scientists that isolated themselves from the scientific community by clinging to their crazy ideas, such as a “theory” that humans have evolved by hybridization between a boar and a female chimpanzee. Donald Prothero described this sad case on the Skepticblog:
As his website points out, his current work has not met with a good reception in the scientific community, a fact which he claims (as do all crackpots) is due to a great conspiracy of scientists to suppress his radical, groundbreaking flashes of genius, a trope so overused it has its own name: the Galileo fallacy. (First sign of a crackpot: self-publication of grandiose claims. Second sign: no peer review because they are all conspiring against him).
Another example concerns a creationist who developed his own evolutionary theory and calls everyone that disagrees with him a pseudoscientist. Oh, and he also claims that the peer review system is fraudulent.
Peer Review
The previous tangent on pseudoscientific crackpots provides a nice bridge to the importance of peer review. Even though you wrote a manuscript by yourself, it still needs to be assessed by other scientists. I have always benefited from the peer review process. My manuscripts definitely improved after several rounds of critical comments. For example, the final section of my paper on Haldane’s Rule was terrible (in hindsight) until one reviewer provided me with constructive feedback. Peer review is not perfect, but it works.
In summary, I can highly recommend writing a single-author paper. It can speed up the publication process and you can highlight your original ideas. But always keep in mind that writing alone is not the same as working alone. Discuss your ideas with colleagues and trust the peer review system. Science is not done in a vacuum (unless you are a physicist).
jente ottenburghs 