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Publish or perish--the growing trend towards multiple authorship.

This study was undertaken to investigate the subjective impression that medical articles written by a single author predominated a decade ago, whereas multiple authorship is the rule today. Samples from 1971 and 1982 issues of the South African Medical Journal were studied, and the impression is shown to be valid. The mean number of authors per article increased from 1,77 in 1971 to 2,35 in 1982, while the proportion of articles with only 1 author decreased from 60,8% to 40,8%. Possible reasons for this are mentioned, of which the pressure to publish may not be the least.