Changes in Manuscript Length, Research Team Size, and International Collaboration in the Post-2022 Period: Evidence from PLOS ONE

TL;DR

This study analyzes structural changes in research publications from PLOS ONE before and after 2022, revealing increased manuscript length, reduced collaboration among non-native English speakers, and stable patterns among native speakers, indicating evolving scientific writing practices.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive population-level analysis of manuscript length, team size, and collaboration patterns across diverse fields using a large, longitudinal dataset from PLOS ONE.

Findings

Manuscript length increased significantly across all groups.

Non-native English speakers reduced collaboration with native speakers.

Native English speakers' collaboration and team sizes remained stable.

Abstract

Large language models (LLMs) have diffused rapidly into academic writing since late 2022. Using the complete population of 109,393 research articles published in \textit{PLOS ONE} between 2019 and 2025, we examine population-level structural publication indicators, including full-text manuscript length, authorship team size, reference volume, and cross-linguistic collaboration, before and after 2022. \textit{PLOS ONE}'s multidisciplinary scope and consistent editorial framework allow cross-field comparison under uniform conditions over an extended period. Manuscript length increased substantially, with gains ranging from 14.8\% among African-affiliated authors and 11.7\% among Asian-affiliated authors to 5.3\% among native English-speaking (NES) authors, cutting the word-count gap by 39\%. More strikingly, non-native English-speaking (NNES) authors reduced both authorship team size, from 6.54 to 6.06 authors, or 7.3\%, and collaboration with NES co-authors, from 17.8\% to 12.2\%, or 36\%, while NES authors remained stable in both team size and collaboration rates. Reference counts increased modestly and uniformly across groups. These findings suggest that post-2022 tools may be reshaping not only how science is written, but who writes it together.