Empirically, articles with more authors are cited more, according to Wuchty et al. (2007). The reasons may be good or bad. A good reason is that coauthored papers may have higher quality, e.g. due to division of labour increasing the efficiency of knowledge production. I propose the following bad reasons, independent of potential quality differences between coauthored and solo articles. Suppose that researchers cite the works of their friends more frequently than warranted. A given scientist is more likely to have a friend among the authors of an article with a greater number of collaborators, which increases its probability of getting a „friendly citation”.

Another reason is defensive citing, i.e. including relatively unrelated papers in the reference list before submitting to a journal, in case the referees happen to be the authors of those works. The reason for adding these unnecessary citations is the belief, warranted or not, that a referee is more likely to recommend acceptance of a paper if it cites the referee’s publications. The probability that the set of referees overlaps with the set of authors of a given prior work increases in the number of authors of that work. Thus defensive citing is more effective when targeted to collaborative instead of solo papers.

The referees may also directly ask the author to cite certain papers in the revision (I have had this experience). If the referees are more likely to request citations to their own or their coauthors’ work, then articles with more authors are again referenced more.

Valderas et al. (2007) offer some additional explanations. One is measurement error. Suppose that letters to the editor, annual reports of the learned society, its presidential inaugural addresses, and other non-research in scientific journals are counted as publications. These have both fewer authors and citations than regular research articles, which creates a positive correlation between the popularity of a piece of writing and its number of authors.

If self-citations are not excluded and researchers cite their own work more frequently than that of others, then papers with more authors get cited more.

Articles with more collaborators are presented more frequently, thus their existence is more widely known. Awareness of a work is a prerequisite of citing it, so the wider circulation of multi-author publications gives them a greater likelihood of being referenced, independent of quality.