Writing Together: Reflections on the Craft, Dynamics, and Politics of Co-Authorship

In a previous post I noted that a lot of my recent writing has taken the form of collaborations, and also that this is not the form of work that I have always found most comfortable for me. Even as I was writing those lines, I was conscious of the tension between different feelings. Some of my best work has come out of collaboration, including the Doctoral Study volume (co-edited with Richard Fay) and the Intentional Dynamics monograph (co-authored with Juup Stelma), and –earlier still, when I was still at the start of my doctoral studies– a chapter co-authored with my fellow students, Paul Breen and Magdalena de Stefani, a piece that I still remember with a lot of affection. And yet, I often find the actual process more stressful than writing in isolation.

Co-authorship, I have come to realise, is as much about the negotiation of meaning as it is about the sharing of words on a page; and this is a process that can be highly rewarding but also intellectually challenging. This post is an attempt to make sense of that ambivalence. My aim in what follows is not so much to prescribe a model of collaboration, but to reflect on what it reveals about writing itself as a craft, as a relationship, and as an act of shared meaning-making. If you’ve ever found yourself navigating the joys and frictions of shared writing, I hope you’ll read on, and perhaps even recognise some of your own experiences in what follows.

Why do academics write together?

I don’t have any statistics to back this up, but I think that co-authored work is much more common now than it was in the past. There are many good reasons for this, some pragmatic, some intellectual and some affective. Here are the ones that stand out for me.

Pragmatic considerations

For one, writing together may be motivated by practical considerations. For instance, it may involve two or more people pooling their complementary expertise to produce a text that neither of them could have written alone. The Doctoral Study monograph, where we synthesise the narratives of early career researchers as they make their way into publishing, is a good example of this. Richard was much more familiar with narrative theory than I was, and I was more confident than he was in the ecological thinking which formed the backbone of our analysis.

Another obvious advantage of co-authorship is that it allows people to write more efficiently by dividing labour between them, perhaps in ways that best match their strengths and interests. When Eleni Motsiou and I were writing our Family Language Policies article, this involved filtering through, classifying, reading and analysing a massive amount of data, which would have taken both of us considerably longer to handle individually. By working in parallel —each focusing on a subset of the material— we were able to move the project forward at a steady pace. More importantly, this created a sense of accountability that sustained my motivation more than would have been possible if I was working alone.

A further, less romantic reason for co-authorship lies in the institutional culture surrounding academic publishing. Universities often expect staff to produce more outputs than time or resources realistically allow, and to do so within increasingly compressed timelines. In such contexts, collaboration can become a pragmatic response to structural pressure. By sharing effort and co-signing publications, people not only make the workload more manageable but also contribute to the collective performance indicators on which our institutions depend.

Intellectual considerations

While some collaborations are motivated by pragmatic arrangements, the reason I find most compelling is that co-writing is a way of thinking that encourages intellectual development. I have found that when I write with others, our ideas take shape through dialogue —not in the sense of casual conversation, but as a sustained exchange that challenges assumptions, tests interpretations, and refines arguments.

A lot of my writing on complex systems theory has been co-authored with Juup Stelma. These writing partnerships have been spaces of intense intellectual dialogue, where we test each other’s formulations, refine our arguments, and arrive at meanings that neither of us could have reached alone. What emerges from this process is rarely what either I or Juup had in mind at the outset; it is something that emerged form between us, in the interplay of perspectives, voices, and intellectual sensibilities.

Seen this way, co-authorship is an epistemic practice, i.e., a way of generating ideas that acknowledges the social nature of understanding. The finished article, chapter or book, is just the visible outcome of this interaction; what lingers, and is perhaps more valuable, is the expanded horizon that comes from seeing one’s own ideas refracted through another’s point of view.

Affective considerations

Beyond the intellectual and practical motives for collaboration, there are also deeply affective ones. You write with the people you like. Academic life is (or has become) a pressurised and insular condition, where not much socialising is possible. Co-authorship creates small communities of shared purpose, with people who understand and share the anxieties of deadlines, the frustrations of reviewer comments, and the incremental progress that scholarship often entails. In such company, writing can become less of an isolating struggle and more of a joint venture, punctuated by conversation, humour, and mutual encouragement.

For me at least, such partnerships offer a kind of emotional ballast. When motivation wanes, as it often does, what rekindles momentum is the enthusiasm of my collaborators. When I feel ambivalent about the value of what I’ve written, reassurance comes in my co-authors’ confidence in the project. Co-authorship is primarily about intellectual synergy, but it is also very much about care and reminding each other that motivation is rarely created alone.

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Taken together, these practical, intellectual, and emotional motives suggest that co-authorship is never just a matter of convenience, but rather a constellation of needs and aspirations. But while these motives explain why we write together, they say little about how such collaborations actually take shape. The next section looks more closely at the different ways in which academic writing partnerships are organised, and how these arrangements shape both the process and the product of our work.

How writing collaborations take place

There are many forms of academic writing collaborations, each reflecting different purposes, working habits, and power relations. Some of the most common are:

Lead and support authorship

This is what happens when one author takes the primary responsibility for producing a manuscript, with a second one sharing expertise and feedback. This model of authorship is common when writing with one’s mentor (or students, depending on your perspective). The papers I publish with my students, such as the one focusing on the ideology of language textbooks, co-authored with Spyros Moustakas, are typical of such researcher-mentor dynamics. Still, this model is by no means limited to supervision: it also makes sense when one author has greater availability or stronger incentives to produce a paper.

There are several advantages to ‘lead and support’ writing, at least when it’s when done properly. For one, it works well when one of the authors has more time or stronger motivation to write. It also allows for the lead author to mature as a writer, although this requires a certain degree of restraint from the ‘support’ author. I remember how Juup Stelma, who was at the time my doctoral supervisor once described this dynamic: “think of your self as the chef and me as your assistant: tell me what you need to prepare, but cook the dish you want”. With more dominating co-authors, there is a danger that such an arrangement reinforces hierarchical dynamics making personal growth harder.

More to explore: Pat Thomson has written a thoughtful piece on the nuances of writing with supervisors, which is well worth the read.

Distributed or modular writing

In this model, each author assumes responsibility for one section of the paper. I often find that this model works well for me: for example, a co-author and I might take on different parts of a literature review; also, I somehow always end up writing the methodology section on my own. This is an efficient way to work, and it lends itself well to projects that have a clear moduler structure, as is often the case with research articles or edited books.

On the downside, distributed writing carries a risk of fragmentation, both in terms of authorial voice and in terms of conceptual coherence. Invariably teams will need to invest considerable time for a final editing phase where one person undertakes to smooth out voice inconsistencies, reduce redundancies and even standardise formatting. The time (and effort and frustration) involved in this can be considerably reduced if the authors spend enough time before they begin writing to make sure they all have a coherent understanding of the project.

Caution: While co-authorship often reflects genuine collaboration, it can also obscure unequal contributions or institutional pressures, argues Sameer Kumar (2018).

Tandem writing

This model of co-authorship involves co-constructing a paper line by line, essentially developing a shared “third voice”. It is, in many ways, the most dialogic and intellectually generative form of writing: every sentence becomes an occasion for negotiation, clarification, and refinement. For me, this approach works particularly well during the editing phase, when the structure is already in place and what is needed is precision of thought and language.

However, I have found that this process too time-consuming for drafting an entire paper, and the demands it makes on sustained attention and constant mutual adjustment are far from trivial. More importantly, it presupposes a high degree of trust and respect between collaborators, not only to question each other’s ideas without defensiveness, but also to tolerate the discomfort that comes with having one’s words rewritten in real time.

More to read: What I describe as tandem writing resonates with emerging models of ‘consortium authorship’, which re-frame authorship as a collective act rather than a sum of discrete contributions. You can read more about this in this article by Hub Zwart and colleagues (2025).

Gift and Ghost authorship

In the interest of being comprehensive, I should also mention that sometimes (often?) people may receive credit for contributing to a paper, without doing much work. In some disciplines this practice might be more accepted (e.g., laboratory directors are commonly listed as last authors in multi-authored teams), but coercing one’s way into a paper is generally considered a form of academic malpractice.

The same applies, even more strongly, to ‘ghost’ authorships. This is the case when someone’s contribution would merit getting credit as an author, but this credit is not given.

More to explore: Negotiating authorship can be challenging, especially when there is significant disparity in power between the authors. There is some useful advice on how to tactfully refuse a demand for unmerited authorship at the European Network for Academic Integrity. See also the ‘further reading’ section at the end of this post.

Overview of co-authorship models

Authorship model	Advantages	Points to consider
Lead and Support Authorship	Clear division of labour and accountability. Efficient when one author has stronger writing or time availability. Good mentoring model for student-supervisor pairs.	May reinforce hierarchical dynamics. Contributions of “support” authors might undervalued. Can limit mutual learning if roles are too rigid.
Distributed / Modular Writing	Allows parallel progress and efficiency. Leverages complementary expertise. Works well for structured papers (e.g., empirical studies).	Potential for fragmented voice or style. Requires coordination and upfront alignment. Integration can be time-consuming.
Tandem Writing	Produces a cohesive, “shared voice.” Encourages deep dialogue and mutual understanding. Strengthens trust and intellectual connection.	Time-intensive and cognitively demanding. Requires high interpersonal compatibility.
Gift Authorship	May appear to strengthen professional networks (though ethically dubious).	Undermines academic integrity. Devalues genuine contributions. Causes reputational harm.
Ghost Authorship	None. This is unethical practice.	Violates publication ethics. Obscures accountability and transparency. Misrepresent expertise and data ownership.

The collaborative writing process

Once we decide to write together, the question becomes less about who does what and more about how the text will actually come into being. Collaboration is rarely a neat, linear process: it unfolds through shared planning sessions, long stretches of asynchronous drafting, and countless rounds of feedback that slowly shape the writing into something coherent.

Along the way, there are practical matters to figure out, like how to keep track of versions, where to store files, which tools to use, and of course also also emotional ones, such as how to stay patient, generous, and open to change. Writing together means learning to navigate both the visible infrastructures and the invisible labour that underlie collaboration. All of this begins with the deceptively simple question of how text actually emerges when more than one mind and voice are involved.

Tools and practices for collaborative writing

In any co-authored paper, the tools we use are not just technical conveniences; rather, they are what shapes the rhythm of the work and, maybe also, the relationships among co-authors. Shared drives and cloud-based folders, for instance, make it possible for all authors to access drafts simultaneously, to edit and comment in real time, and to maintain a shared sense of ownership over the text. Yet, even with the best intentions, folders fill with overlapping versions, and filenames multiply in creative but confusing ways. Agreeing early on about naming conventions (e.g., Draft1_AKcomments.docx), storage locations, and document structure can prevent misunderstandings later on.

Choosing the right technology for co-authored projects

Version control becomes especially important when drafts move quickly or when several people edit at once. Given choice, I prefer to work with tracked changes and email attachments. This gives everyone time to reflect before editing, work in their own pace. However, this approach can quickly become cumbersome when multiple versions of the same file start circulating, and it often requires someone to consolidate everything manually.

The alternative, which we have used in some projects in some projects, co-authors and I have used, is a web-based document like Google Docs. This solves most coordination problems by keeping a single, shared version of the text. Personally, I have found that this way of working inhibits tentative phrasing or exploratory thinking. It also assumes a degree of digital fluency that not all collaborators may share.

Method	Advantages	Drawbacks
Tracked changes & email attachments	Clear linear history of revisions. Encourages reflective, considered feedback. Works offline and fits traditional workflows. Minimizes overlap in simultaneous editing.	Easily leads to version confusion (“final_v3_revised_final”). Requires manual merging of edits. Slower turnaround time. Less transparent when many co-authors are involved.
Cloud-based systems (e.g., Google Docs, Overleaf)	Single shared version, so no confusion about “latest draft.” Enables real-time collaboration and commenting. Increases transparency of contributions. Reduces file management workload.	Can feel chaotic or intrusive when too many edit at once. Requires constant internet access. Limited control over formatting and citation tools. Risk of overwriting or losing nuance in rapid edits.

Ultimately, however, the choice of tool matters less than the shared understanding of how and when to use it. The key is to make collaboration visible and traceable, so that no one’s contribution is lost or overwritten.

Developing helpful attitudes towards co-writing

Equally important are the informal practices that make collaboration humane: leaving comments in a tone that invites response rather than defensiveness; acknowledging the work that others put in, even in small revisions; and finding a rhythm of exchange that respects different schedules and working styles. In some of my more successful collaborations, we eventually settled for a routine of asynchronous drafting followed by focused feedback sessions. This iterative cycle that allows ideas to mature while keeping everyone involved.

And then, of course, there’s the emotional labour of co-authorship. This includes the patience required when progress is slow, the humility to accept that one’s preferred phrasing may not survive the next round of edits, and the humour that helps to defuse tension when deadlines loom. These may seem like small things, but they are what make sustained collaboration possible. Tools may support the process, but it is these shared habits, and the goodwill behind them, that turn co-authorship into genuine collective thinking.

When collaboration falters

Even with the best intentions, collaborations can drift off course. Sometimes expectations are simply mismatched: what feels like a manageable side project for one person may be a major professional commitment for another. At other times, enthusiasm just fades as workloads or institutional pressures shift. Miscommunication can quietly accumulate until a project that once felt energising begins to feel stalled or uneven. Recognising these patterns early, and being willing to talk about them, might often prevent resentment from taking root.

A recurring source of tension is authorship order, which is easy to postpone and surprisingly hard to discuss. Yet deciding who is listed first (and why) is not just a matter of etiquette; it signals how labour, expertise, and responsibility are distributed. Talking about authorship early on helps surface assumptions about contribution and leadership, and it can even clarify the structure of the project itself. There are no universal rules, but transparent conversations, perhaps ideally revisited as the work evolves, go a long way toward keeping everyone aligned and respected.

Sometimes, despite everyone’s goodwill, collaboration simply stops working. Timelines diverge, motivation wanes, or the chemistry that once made writing together productive no longer does. In those moments, stepping back or letting go gracefully can be an act of professionalism rather than defeat. It allows others to continue without bitterness and preserves the possibility of future cooperation. Not every collaboration needs to last; some are meant to teach us how we work, what we value, and when it is kinder, to ourselves and to others, to stop.

What collaboration teaches us about writing

While workflow and efficiency are important, what I’ve come to realise over time, is that the real lessons of collaboration are about what writing with others reveals about writing and ourselves.

Writing as dialogue and finding a third voice

At its best, co-authorship reveals writing as a form of dialogue. When we write with others, our ideas are not only shared but also sharpened. In my own writing, e.g., about complexity theory with Juup Stelma, my co-authors did not simply contribute new ideas: they have constantly questioned, tested, and refined my thinking until it become clearer in my own minds. This back-and-forth exposed the limits of my assumptions, and while it often left me frustrated and confused, it also challenged me to articulate, again and more clearly, what I really meant. I am grateful for such exchanges, because they produced the kind intellectual precision that is hard to achieve, or desire, in solitude.

Alongside this, co-authored projects lead to the emergence of what feels like a third voice, i.e., a style and perspective that neither fully belongs to one nor the other author. To come back to my co-authored works with Juup, where this voice developed over years (we have been publishing together for well over a decade), I find it impossible to pinpoint which sentences were ‘mine’ and which ones were ‘his’. This third voice emerges gradually, somewhere between the first draft and the final revision, when different turns of phrase, rhythms, and lines of thought begin to merge. It seems like a compromise, but it really isn’t; rather, it’s an expression of shared thinking, that traces back to each writer, yet points beyond them.

Co-authorship and the ethics of generosity

What I find more profoundly impactful about collaborative writing is how it nurtures what one might call the ethics of generosity. By this I mean the attitudes and practices that sustain fair, respectful, and collegial collaboration in academic work.

In the context of co-authorship, the ethics of generosity involve the sustained effort to engage with others in ways that honour their contributions and perspectives. This begins with the simple act of recognising that writing together is not a competition for credit but a shared search for meaning. It means listening with curiosity rather than defensiveness, offering suggestions that build rather than replace, and acknowledging the invisible labour that co-authorship entails: the time spent repeatedly rephrasing a sentence, checking and formatting references, or calming anxieties before submission.

Generosity in this sense is not a sentiment; rather, it’s an intellectual stance grounded in respect for the other’s perspective and in trust that ideas improve through dialogue. It also involves knowing when to yield a point, when to let your co-author’s phrasing stand, and when to step back so that the collective voice can emerge. This kind of generosity takes time to build (I have been learning for years!), but over time this generosity becomes a quiet form of integrity. It has shaped not only how I write, but also how I think about knowledge: not as something owned by me (“this was my idea!”) but as something made with others.

The long view: how co-authorship shapes scholarly identity

Looking back, over the years, I think can trace much of my academic development through the people I have written with. Early in my career, co-authorship often meant learning under supervision: contributing to projects that were already in motion, absorbing the discipline and rhythm of academic writing, and gradually discovering how ideas take shape on the page. Those early collaborations were as much about apprenticeship as authorship, and echo what Dylan Williams wrote in the Doctoral Study book about being shaped by writing. Such experiences taught me to attend carefully to detail, to revise without ego, and to find satisfaction not only in originality but also in precision and clarity.

Writing with peers, at that stage and later in my career was a more symmetrical exchange: a dialogue of equals in which ideas were tested and reshaped through conversation. These collaborations have been often the most energising ones, marked by shared curiosity and mutual challenge. The process of writing together blurred the line between thinking and socialising: the text became a space where professional respect met genuine friendship.

Now, as I increasingly find myself writing with students and younger colleagues, the pattern has turned once more. Co-authorship has become a way of mentoring, not by instructing but by accompanying others as they learn to find their own voices. It is humbling to see echoes of my earlier experiences in theirs: the uncertainty, the gradual confidence, the quiet pride when a sentence finally feels right. These collaborations remind me that scholarly identity is never fixed: it is built through relationships, passed on through writing, and renewed each time we sit down to compose something together.

Conclusion

Collaboration in writing is never just a strategy for efficiency; it is a way of thinking and becoming together. Through the rhythms of shared drafting, negotiation, and revision, we come to see our ideas from perspectives we could not have reached alone. Co-authorship teaches patience and precision, but it also teaches generosity, humility, and trust. It reminds us that scholarship is a collective endeavour, which depends as much on relationships as on individual insight.

If there is an invitation in all this, it is to approach collaboration not as a transaction but as a practice of care. Choose co-authors whose company you value, speak openly about expectations, and remain curious about what you might learn from each other. When the work becomes difficult (as it often will!) treat the process itself as part of your professional growth. The best collaborations do more than produce papers; they expand our ways of thinking, strengthen our communities, and leave behind both texts and relationships that outlast any single project.

So perhaps the next time you find yourself shaping an idea, you might pause and ask: Who else could I think this through with? Collaboration begins with that simple question. Invite someone whose perspective challenges yours, or whose experience complements your own. Begin a conversation, exchange a few notes, draft a paragraph together. You may find that what emerges is not only a better paper, but a deeper understanding of your work, and of yourself as a writer. What remains, long after the articles are published, are the conversations that shaped them, and the quiet knowledge that our words were never ours alone.