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My colleagues and students are never shy about pointing out my faults, and one that annoys them is my propensity to tell weak, unoriginal jokes and then repeat them. In my defence, the complaint shows that they remember the jokes, which is more than I can say about many of the points I try to make seriously. In that light, the title of this article parrots a weak, unoriginal joke – King (2000); Durani et al. (2007); Modi et al. (2008); Rahman and Muirhead-Allwood (2010) and no doubt many others have already cracked it, albeit in the context of different disciplines. Having used that to gain attention, I want to transition to the serious point in the hope that readers will remember it along with the bad joke – all authors need to agree to a manuscript’s submission, and to all stages of its revision. The mean number of authors on scientific papers has been climbing since late last century (e.g. Logan 2016 and included references). Reasons include the need for teams of experts with different skills to work onmultidisciplinary topics, international collaborations to crack problems of global significance, and an honest desire to include all people who meet the criteria for authorship laid down in guides to research conduct such as NHMRC, ARC and Universities Australia (2007). However, multiple authorship can lead to tensions or even conflict (e.g. Kwok 2005; Tsai et al. 2016), including cases where one or more authors are named on papers without their agreement or where revised versions of papers are submitted without the knowledge or input of some of the coauthors (Example 4 in Primack (2014)). Primack (2014) observed that ‘This situation of submitting papers without the knowledge and permission of coauthors appears to be happening more frequently now. It is a worrying trend, and it (sic) contrary to professional standards and against journal policy.’ Although he was referring to the journal Biological Conservation when he mentioned journal policy, the point is true for Pacific Conservation Biology and no doubt many other journals too. ‘Ghost authorship’, where a person with legitimate claims to authorship is left off the authorship list, is another major cause of dispute (Albert and Wager 2003). NHMRC, ARC and Universities Australia (2007) specifically state: ‘A person who qualifies as an author must not be included or excluded as an author without their permission. This should be in writing, and include a brief description of their contribution to the work.’ Including authors without their permission or without them having seen the submitted version of a manuscript or a revision is problematic for many reasons, such as:

How many conservation biologists does it take to write a research paper, and do they all know they’ve written it?