AbstractIt is empirically shown that, even using the normal or total counting procedure, Lotka's law breaks down when articles with a large, i.e., more than hundred, number of authors are included in the bibliography. The explanation of this phenomenon is that the conditions for an application of the basic success‐breeds‐success model are not fulfilled any more. Studying articles with many authors means dealing with items (the articles) having multiple sources (the authors), hence Egghe's generalized success‐breeds‐success model, leading to not necessarily decreasing distributions, explains the observed irregularities.