In this study 11,975 distinct DEA authors were identified in total, with an average of 2.6 authors per publication. About 17% of all DEA-related articles were written by a single/sole author, while about 34% were published by two authors. Most of all DEA-related articles, about 94%, have four or less than four authors. The article with most authors has 30 distinct names. The following Fig. 2 shows the distribution of DEA-related articles by number of authors.
![Fig. 2](https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0038012117300174-gr2.jpg)
Fig. 2. Distributions of DEA-related articles by number of authors (1978–2016).