OPINION Factory science Short title Factory science Long title How many authors does it really need to write a paper? Authors Martin Schmidt 1 , Benedikt Fecher 1 , Christian Kobsda 1 Author affiliation 1 Knowledge Dimension, Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, Germany Author bios Martin Schmidt is a doctoral researcher at the Institute of Landscape Systems Analysis within Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research and associate researcher at Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society. Benedikt Fecher is the programme director of the research programme Knowledge Dimension and heads the Open Science research group at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society. Christian Kobsda works as the political consultant at the Leibniz Association and is an associate researcher at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society. Author social links Martin Schmidt: ORCID – ResearchGate – Twitter Benedikt Fecher: ORCID – ResearchGate Christian Kobsda: ORCID – ResearchGate – Twitter Date published 10 July 2017 DOI 10.5281/zenodo.818231 Cite as (APA) Schmidt, M., Fecher, B., Kobsda, C. (2017). How many authors does it really need to write a paper? Elephant in the lab. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.818231 Motivation As the major currency in the scientific reputation economy, the analysis of article publishing reveals different disciplinary cultures and working styles. In STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) scientists publish several short articles per year in collaboration