overauthor

Verb

overauthor (third-person singular simple present overauthors, present participle overauthoring, simple past and past participle overauthored)

1. To add too many names to the list of authors on a work produced by a team.
   • In most cases, it is better to "overauthor" in team publications than to "underauthor", to include an individual if there is...1982, Miscellaneous Publication - Issues 18-19, page 47
   • Articles were not then overauthored or overreferenced: the mean number of authors per original article was 1-5 (range 1-4) in 1926, compared with 3-3 (range 1-12) in 1985;1986 October, SP Lock, “For wrapping the fish and chips”, in Archives of disease in childhood, volume 61, number 10
2. To continue revising a work past the point where the revisions improve the work.
   • In 1817, which marks the first appearance of The Ancient Mariner as a work by Coleridge, the poem is, by contrast, almost overauthored.1994, Jack Stillinger, Coleridge and Textual Instability, →ISBN
   • The problem that Benjamin identifies with this impulse, however, is the opportunity to overauthor the world; in the same essay Benjamin castigates the practice of photography as artistic production, stating that this art form merely 'succeed[s] in transforming even abject poverty—by apprehending it...2010 Fall, Sheila Liming, “Of Anarchy and Amateurism: Zine Publication and Print Dissent”, in The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, volume 43, number 2, page 137