Publication author list -- more or less author is better?

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DameJulie

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This relates to admission to medical school, or just in general.

I noticed pre-meds have two typical types of authorship in publications:
1) Middle-back author on a clinical-trial study (i.e. #15 out of 20 authors)
2) Middle authorship in a list of few people on basic science/humanities research (i.e. 2nd out of 3 authors)

Are each kind looked more favorable upon when adcoms review the application? Does the amount of authors matter in a publication?

First-authorship/co-authoring in review articles does not apply here.

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I don't think that, barring a first-authorship, order or number of authors matters that much. Either way, the fact that your name is included in the authors demonstrates that you made some significant contribution to the work.
 
I'd take the 2nd out of 3 on a basic science pub. Getting your name on the back end of a clinical study can take a laughably small amount of effort, like just a couple days doing chart review.
 
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Yeah first author basic science usually means real work. Anything basic science at this level usually means punching above ones weight. I would prefer a first author systematic review compared to being on the bottom of the list on a case study .
 
It doesn't matter. Really.

This relates to admission to medical school, or just in general.

I noticed pre-meds have two typical types of authorship in publications:
1) Middle-back author on a clinical-trial study (i.e. #15 out of 20 authors)
2) Middle authorship in a list of few people on basic science/humanities research (i.e. 2nd out of 3 authors)

Are each kind looked more favorable upon when adcoms review the application? Does the amount of authors matter in a publication?

First-authorship/co-authoring in review articles does not apply here.
 
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Reactions: 1 user
I think whenever an academic looks at an author list and there are 20 authors on a paper and you're not in the first 5 or so, the immediate (possibly subconscious) impression is that you didn't do much work and got on the paper as a courtesy (which shouldn't happen, but it does). If there are 3 authors and you're the second author, the immediate impression again is that you did a substantial part of the work. Kind of how the human brain works - you see 20 people and you immediately divide up the work among 20 people, you see 3 people and you immediately divide up the work among 3 people.
 
Science doesn't happen in a vacuum -- and many labs/research groups have more than three people working on them. The LIGO papers that came out last year regarding gravitational waves had dozens (if not hundreds) of authors.
 
Science doesn't happen in a vacuum -- and many labs/research groups have more than three people working on them. The LIGO papers that came out last year regarding gravitational waves had dozens (if not hundreds) of authors.

It definitely depends on the field, project, and magnitude of the undertaking. For something that is really high-impact with lots of collaborating groups, the author list will obviously be very long. I would guess there are probably fewer than 5-10 such works in each given field per year (with the exception of very rapidly growing fields like nanotechnology, etc.). Most projects in chemistry have 2-3 graduate students working on them. When you get into the structural biology/protein-based chemistry you might have a few more because you'll have x-ray specialists, etc.
 
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