What if the problem of your paper is your co-author?

And let’s not forget, you might be that co-author...

Co-authoring can be tricky. As a historian, co-authoring was not a thing when I was trained. Moving into the management school, I felt like Johnny-no-mates when colleagues were despairing over co-author dilemmas and conflicts.

Apparently, the online world refers to it as a blood sport.

Like many things in academia, that sounds somewhat overwrought, but there is no question that these conflicts can become very bruising and end academic relationships.

Interested in other pieces about publishing and academic writing? Here are a few that might be of interest:

• Saving the paper in search of a point

• Wanna be an academic? Embrace rejection

• The newly published researcher’s toolkit

• Getting your doctorate without the suffering Olympics by Ome Okoyomoh

It’s tricky to list an even remotely comprehensive list of the sources of conflict:

• Author order

• Who gets to be first or corresponding author

• Failure to contribute

• Failure by the first/corresponding author to act and contribute

• Disagreement over direction

• Incom…