The most authors ever credited on one peer-reviewed paper is 15,025. Guinness World Records verified the figure on 24 March 2021 for a study by the COVIDSurg and GlobalSurg Collaboratives, published in the British Journal of Surgery (BJS) that day, with authors in 116 countries (Guinness World Records, n.d.). The best-known record before it was a 2015 physics paper on the mass of the Higgs boson, which named 5,154 people (Castelvecchi, 2015).
EdCitation publishes this guide. Every count comes from the paper, its publisher, the index that holds it or the reporting at the time, and every rule from APA, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and IEEE's own guides, all read on 3 October 2026. Where sources disagree, or a number could not be settled, we say so.
Nobody types 5,154 names. EdCitation's free Cite a source reads the author list from the publisher's record by DOI and applies each style's cut-off. It never writes any part of your work: every sentence stays yours, and we are proud of that.
Which paper has the most authors?
The COVIDSurg and GlobalSurg Collaboratives' "SARS-CoV-2 vaccination modelling for safe surgery to save lives" holds the record, with 15,025 authors, according to Guinness World Records (n.d.). It modelled who should be vaccinated first, and found that 351 patients aged 70 or over who needed cancer surgery had to be vaccinated to prevent one COVID-19 death in a year, against 1,840 people in the general population (COVIDSurg Collaborative, GlobalSurg Collaborative, 2021).
A byline with no person in it
The byline names only the two groups, and a note says their members are co-authors, listed under Collaborators. PubMed's record of the paper (PMID 33761533) holds the groups as one collective author and, when we read it, 15,013 collaborator names, which NLM also calls investigators. We could not account for the 12 names between that count and Guinness's 15,025.
The 5,154-author Higgs paper
On 14 May 2015 Physical Review Letters published the first joint paper of ATLAS and CMS, the two large detector teams at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. Pooling their data, they put the Higgs boson's mass at 125.09 GeV, give or take 0.21 (statistical) and 0.11 (systematic) (Aad et al., 2015). Of its 33 pages, nine carried the research and its references and 24 carried names and institutions. The biggest problem, an editor of the journal, Robert Garisto, told Nature, was merging two collaborations' author lists, each in its own style (Castelvecchi, 2015).
We counted the names on the publisher's page: 2,828 for ATLAS, in alphabetical order from G. Aad to L. Zwalinski, then 2,326 for CMS, grouped by institution and ending with N. Woods of the University of Wisconsin. Crossref and PubMed (PMID 26024162) hold the same 5,154 people and add ATLAS Collaboration and CMS Collaboration as authors after them.
Which other papers have thousands of authors?
Physics has had them longest; genomics and medicine have them now. Each count comes from the source beside it.
| Year | Paper | Authors | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | CMS Collaboration, "The CMS experiment at the CERN LHC", Journal of Instrumentation | The first paper over 3,000, by ScienceWatch's count | Castelvecchi (2015) |
| 2012 | ATLAS Collaboration, the observation of the Higgs particle, Physics Letters B | 2,932, of whom 21 were listed as deceased | Castelvecchi (2015) |
| 2015 | Leung and colleagues, Drosophila Muller F elements, G3 | 1,014, more than 900 of them undergraduates | Woolston (2015) |
| 2015 | CMS and LHCb Collaborations, a rare particle decay, Nature | About 2,700, listed online only, not in print | Castelvecchi (2015) |
| 2015 | Aad and colleagues, the combined Higgs mass, Physical Review Letters | 5,154, every name also in print | Castelvecchi (2015); the publisher's page |
| 2021 | COVIDSurg and GlobalSurg Collaboratives, vaccination before surgery, BJS | 15,025 by Guinness's count; 15,013 collaborator names in PubMed | Guinness World Records (n.d.); PubMed |
| Every paper | All records in PubMed's 2023 baseline | 4.39 personal authors on average; 6.38 for 2020 to 2023 | National Library of Medicine (n.d.-b) |
Why do some papers have thousands of authors?
Because some experiments need thousands of people, and the fields that run them credit everyone who took part. The information scientist Blaise Cronin is credited with the word for it, hyperauthorship (Castelvecchi, 2015). His 2001 paper argued that multiple authorship was straining the classical idea of the author, and set out the proposal to replace authors with lists of contributors, each recorded with what they did (Cronin, 2001).
The trend is growing. A study of the Web of Science found that papers with more than 1,000 authors had more than doubled in five years, Nature reported in December 2019 (Chawla, 2019).
The argument over the fruit-fly paper
The 1,014-name genomics paper took the argument beyond physics in May 2015. The biologist Zen Faulkes wrote that such papers empty the word "authorship" of meaning, and suggested crediting the students as contributors. The senior author, Sarah Elgin, answered that every student had read, critiqued and approved the manuscript, though none wrote or revised it, and had made a real intellectual contribution (Woolston, 2015).
Who counts as an author?
The ICMJE asks a large group to decide who will be an author before the work starts, and every person named to meet all four of its criteria, approving the final manuscript among them. It adds that MEDLINE lists as authors the names in the byline (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, n.d.). NLM enters collaborator names only when a group author is in the byline (National Library of Medicine, n.d.-a), which is why the COVIDSurg members appear in PubMed as collaborators, not authors.
How do I cite a paper with thousands of authors in APA 7?
Look at the byline first. If people are named there, APA 7 gives up to 20 in full; with 21 or more, the first 19, an ellipsis with no ampersand, then the final author. If only a group is named, the group is the author, even when individuals are credited elsewhere in the paper (American Psychological Association, n.d.). In the text, the first author and et al. stand for the rest: (Aad et al., 2015).
APA set the number with papers like these in mind. Its blog post on the rule asks how many authors it takes to write a journal article and answers "5,154 or fewer"; listing every name was not workable, so the seventh edition settled on 20 (McAdoo, 2019). The text rules of every style are in when to use et al., and how APA 6's limit became 20 is in et al. and other rules that changed between editions.
The Higgs paper in APA 7
Given the DOI, Cite a source read Crossref's record, reported no retraction or notice, and returned:
Aad, G., Abbott, B., Abdallah, J., Abdinov, O., Aben, R., Abolins, M., AbouZeid, O. S., Abramowicz, H., Abreu, H., Abreu, R., Abulaiti, Y., Acharya, B. S., Adamczyk, L., Adams, D. L., Adelman, J., Adomeit, S., Adye, T., Affolder, A. A., Agatonovic-Jovin, T., … CMS Collaboration. (2015). Combined measurement of the Higgs Boson mass in p p collisions at s = 7 and 8 TeV with the ATLAS and CMS experiments. Physical Review Letters, 114(19), Article 191803. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.191803
The 19 names match the printed list, and the in-text citation came back as (Aad et al., 2015). Fix two things in the title by hand. The record writes "pp" and "√s" in mathematical markup, which did not survive: make it "pp collisions at √s = 7 and 8 TeV". And lower "Boson", which the sentence case kept, to "Higgs boson". A second run the same morning gave the same entry.
The final author is a judgement. The printed list ends with N. Woods, then both collaborations in brackets; Crossref and PubMed end with CMS Collaboration, and Cite a source follows them. APA allows people and groups together, so either can be defended; our view is to keep the record's.
The COVIDSurg paper in APA 7
Cite a source returned:
COVIDSurg Collaborative, GlobalSurg Collaborative. (2021). SARS-CoV-2 vaccination modelling for safe surgery to save lives: Data from an international prospective cohort study. British Journal of Surgery, 108(9), 1056–1063. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjs/znab101
In the text: (COVIDSurg Collaborative, GlobalSurg Collaborative, 2021). Crossref and PubMed hold the two groups as one name, as the byline prints them; if your marker treats them as two authors, APA puts an ampersand before the final one. None of the 15,025 people goes in the entry, because the byline names only the groups.
How do Vancouver and IEEE cite a paper with thousands of authors?
Both cut far sooner than APA. NLM's Citing Medicine, the rulebook behind Vancouver, gives all authors by default, with an option to stop at three or six and add et al. (Patrias, 2018); the samples NLM keeps for the ICMJE's recommendations list six, then et al. (National Library of Medicine, n.d.-c). IEEE lists up to six names and, with more, the first author's name followed by et al. (IEEE, 2025).
| Style | The Higgs paper (5,154 people) | The COVIDSurg paper (groups only) | Build it in EdCitation |
|---|---|---|---|
| APA 7 | First 19, an ellipsis, the final author | COVIDSurg Collaborative, GlobalSurg Collaborative. | Cite a source, APA 7 |
| Vancouver | Aad G, Abbott B, Abdallah J, Abdinov O, Aben R, Abolins M, et al. | COVIDSurg Collaborative; GlobalSurg Collaborative. | Cite a source, Vancouver |
| IEEE | G. Aad et al., | COVIDSurg Collaborative, GlobalSurg Collaborative, | Cite a source, IEEE |
Vancouver: the semicolon between groups
Citing Medicine separates two organisations with a semicolon, as in its example of the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada, and puts one between people and a group (Patrias, 2018). Cite a source gave the COVIDSurg entry with a comma, as PubMed's own record does. We would use the semicolon, which tells a reader there are two groups:
COVIDSurg Collaborative; GlobalSurg Collaborative. SARS-CoV-2 vaccination modelling for safe surgery to save lives: data from an international prospective cohort study. Br J Surg. 2021 Sep 27;108(9):1056-63. doi: 10.1093/bjs/znab101.
For the Higgs paper it returned the six names and et al. in the table, with the same two title fixes as in APA. More cases are in our Vancouver referencing guide.
What PubMed itself once did with long lists
The index used to cut lists too. NLM entered every author until October 1983, then at most 10; from 1996 the first 24 and the last; from 2000 no limit, and since mid-2005 an older record can be edited to add the missing names (National Library of Medicine, n.d.-b). Its 2023 statistics give 5,154 as the most personal authors on any record, the Higgs figure, but name a 2004 meeting supplement that now lists no authors; we could not settle which record they mean.
IEEE: one name, then et al.
Cite a source returned for the Higgs paper:
G. Aad et al., “Combined Measurement of the Higgs Boson Mass in p p Collisions at s = 7 and 8 TeV with the ATLAS and CMS Experiments,” Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 114, no. 19, May 2015, Art. no. 191803, doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.191803.
IEEE keeps the title's capitals, so only the symbols need restoring: "pp Collisions at √s = 7 and 8 TeV". The IEEE Reference Guide shows a corporate author for standards, but we found no rule for a group in an article's byline; name the group as the byline does. The rest is in our IEEE referencing guide.
How to cite a paper with many authors, step by step
- Find the paper. In EdCitation's free Find sources, "hyperauthorship" sorted by Most cited returned 369 results on 3 October 2026, provider OpenAlex, with Cronin's 2001 paper first, cited by 484.
- Build the entry from the DOI. Paste it into Cite a source and pick the style; the cut-off is applied for you. A DOI leads to the publisher's own record.
- Read the byline. People named there: individual authors. Only a group: a group author, however many members are listed later.
- Restore what the record lost. Symbols and italics can drop out of a title. The fruit-fly paper's DOI gave "DrosophilaMuller f elements" in APA; write "Drosophila Muller F elements".
- Check the whole list. Paste it into Verify references, free, before you hand it in.
Why is EdCitation the best tool for a paper with thousands of authors?
Because the entry depends on a list no one can type, and EdCitation looks it up instead of writing it. The Higgs record holds 5,154 people: Cite a source read them from Crossref, cut them to each style's rule and screened the paper for retraction, free with no account. It builds references from a DOI, title, PubMed ID, ISBN or web address in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver. A chatbot writes a reference instead of finding one, so no chatbot can do this job.
Verify references, also free, marks each entry verified, "check this" or not found, flags retracted papers, and never shows "could not check" as "not found". Where an entry lists every author without et al., it reports a person the record names and the entry leaves out. A free account keeps your reference lists, which download as Word, BibTeX or RIS. References from a file, in Pro at $8 a month, checks every reference in an uploaded paper and matches each in-text citation to the list; Max, at $24 a month, adds Theoretics QA and the Library (pricing).
Quick questions
What is the most authors on a scientific paper?
15,025, for the COVIDSurg and GlobalSurg Collaboratives' 2021 paper in BJS, verified by Guinness World Records on 24 March 2021. Its byline names only the two groups.
How many authors did the Higgs boson paper have?
The 2015 combined measurement of the Higgs boson mass by ATLAS and CMS, in Physical Review Letters, named 5,154 people: 2,828 from ATLAS and 2,326 from CMS. Twenty-four of its 33 pages are names and institutions.
How do you cite a paper with 21 or more authors in APA 7?
List the first 19 authors, an ellipsis, then the final author, with no ampersand. In the text, give the first author and et al., as in (Aad et al., 2015).
Is a collaboration's name an author in a reference?
Yes, when it appears in the byline. If the byline names only the group, cite the group; APA, NLM and the ICMJE all start from the byline.
Can EdCitation cite a paper with thousands of authors?
Yes. Paste the DOI into EdCitation's free Cite a source: it reads the whole author list from the publisher's record and applies the APA, Vancouver or IEEE cut-off. Check any symbols in the title by hand.
References
- Aad, G., Abbott, B., Abdallah, J., Abdinov, O., Aben, R., Abolins, M., AbouZeid, O. S., Abramowicz, H., Abreu, H., Abreu, R., Abulaiti, Y., Acharya, B. S., Adamczyk, L., Adams, D. L., Adelman, J., Adomeit, S., Adye, T., Affolder, A. A., Agatonovic-Jovin, T., … CMS Collaboration. (2015). Combined measurement of the Higgs boson mass in pp collisions at √s = 7 and 8 TeV with the ATLAS and CMS experiments. Physical Review Letters, 114(19), Article 191803. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.191803
- American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Elements of reference list entries. APA Style. https://web.archive.org/web/20260930143702/https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/elements-list-entry
- Castelvecchi, D. (2015, May 15). Physics paper sets record with more than 5,000 authors. Nature. https://web.archive.org/web/20151222091446/http://www.nature.com/news/physics-paper-sets-record-with-more-than-5-000-authors-1.17567
- Chawla, D. S. (2019, December 13). Hyperauthorship: Global projects spark surge in thousand-author papers. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03862-0
- COVIDSurg Collaborative, GlobalSurg Collaborative. (2021). SARS-CoV-2 vaccination modelling for safe surgery to save lives: Data from an international prospective cohort study. British Journal of Surgery, 108(9), 1056–1063. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjs/znab101
- Cronin, B. (2001). Hyperauthorship: A postmodern perversion or evidence of a structural shift in scholarly communication practices? Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 52(7), 558–569. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.1097
- Guinness World Records. (n.d.). Most authors on a single peer-reviewed academic paper. Retrieved October 3, 2026, from https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/653537-most-authors-on-a-single-peer-reviewed-academic-paper
- IEEE. (2025). IEEE reference guide (Version 3.28.2025). IEEE Publication Operations. https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/IEEE_Reference_Guide.pdf
- International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. (n.d.). Defining the role of authors and contributors. https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html
- McAdoo, T. (2019, November 7). How many names to include in an APA Style reference. APA Style. https://web.archive.org/web/20260908092608/https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/more-than-20-authors
- National Library of Medicine. (n.d.-a). Authorship in MEDLINE. Retrieved October 3, 2026, from https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/policy/authorship.html
- National Library of Medicine. (n.d.-b). Number of authors per MEDLINE/PubMed citation. Retrieved October 3, 2026, from https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/authors1.html
- National Library of Medicine. (n.d.-c). Samples of formatted references for authors of journal articles. Retrieved October 3, 2026, from https://www.nlm.nih.gov/bsd/uniform_requirements.html
- Patrias, K. (2018). Journals. In D. Wendling (Ed.), Citing medicine: The NLM style guide for authors, editors, and publishers (2nd ed.). National Library of Medicine. https://web.archive.org/web/20260107121930/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7282/
- Woolston, C. (2015, May 13). Fruit-fly paper has 1,000 authors. Nature. https://web.archive.org/web/20160111145441/http://www.nature.com/news/fruit-fly-paper-has-1-000-authors-1.17555