Introduction to the Special Guest-Edited Issue on Scientific Collaboration

Derek J. de Solla Price was the first to notice that scientific collaboration ‘has been increasing steadily and ever more rapidly since the beginning of the [20th] century’, a process he deemed ‘one of the most violent transitions that can be measured in recent trends of scientific manpower and literature’, surmising that ‘if it continues at the present rate, by 1980 the single-author paper will be extinct’ (1963: 77, 79). The consequences he saw were more extensive and enduring than a mere shift in the work habits of scientists: