I recently completed my BSc in Microbiology & Biotechnology and will soon be starting my Master’s in Biotechnology.
Right now, I’m working on a review paper in the field of wound healing and genetics, and I’m considering collaborating with a co-author to make the work more insightful and well rounded.
My classmates are not interested in writing articles so I’m looking for co author through different means.
For those who have experience co-authoring academic papers:
How did you find your co-author?
Did you meet them through academic groups, conferences, LinkedIn, or somewhere else?
What qualities make for a good co-author in your experience?
Also, is it mandatory for a co-author to be from the same university, or is it perfectly fine to collaborate with students or researchers from other even far-away universities?
I’d really appreciate hearing your thoughts, advice, and stories about successful collaborations.
My co-authors were the colleagues from the college. But one think I learned is that the co-authors should be equally knowledgeable and ready to give it their 100%. Lastly, yes you can select co-authors that are not from your institute.
Finding the right co-author involves a mix of clarity and connection. A good match brings complementary expertise, reliability in meeting deadlines, and smooth communication whether from your own university or beyond.
Platforms like ResearchGate, academic conferences, and services such as Researchmate.net can help expand your search globally.
Seeking advice from fellow researchers is a smart way to grow. It helps you learn from their experiences, avoid mistakes, and get fresh ideas. Sharing thoughts builds collaboration and improves research quality. Open communication can turn challenges into opportunities and guide you toward better results.
If you want to publish a review article specifically, better to do with someone experienced in the field to make the article reach to a level, where it gets published in an international journal. You can approach a faculty who is working in the same field or has worked in the past. This person can be the corresponding author and you being the first author have to do the major work related to finding the matter or content that need to be included within the review article. As a corresponding author, the other person can guide you what to include, how to write, how to collect the articles for the review etc. Besides, you can choose some other students as co-authors as well, who are ready to do the ground work with you like collecting the articles, writing it, designing images and other data interpretation etc. For this, you can target both UG and PG students. You can find both the corresponding and co-authors from LinkedIn and state your proposal to them to check their interest and availability. It is very important to see how ethically this will be carried out as well, as everybody will have different affiliation and that’s why working it out may get difficult. People generally find co-authors and adopt this way when they are already PhDs or PDFs (Post-doctoral fellows) as that collaboration demands experienced individuals in both parties. I will say take admission in a university for your PG degree, find the university where some faculty is working somewhat related to your topic (you can check the faculty profile page on college/university website and can find out) and then get in touch with that faculty and discuss about your interest in writing a review article under his/her guidance. That way this work can happen smoothly and ethically and this faculty may consider you for the research positions as well in future during PG degree (as an intern) or as a research fellow or assistant (after your PG), all solely depending upon your performance throughout. Hope, this helps.