The purpose of the present investigation was to examine the social shaping of practices of collaborative authoring in doctoral programs which have led to the achievement of academic excellence in the natural sciences and in education. Toward that end, we interviewed 9 leaders of Finnish national centers of excellence doing science research and 12 Finnish and European leaders of educational research communities both of whom were engaged in supervising article-based doctoral dissertations consisting of international refereed articles co-authored by students and their supervisors. Qualitative analyses of the interviews revealed various ways that supervisors socially facilitate academic activity of their students. Their methods, which are expanding from natural to such social sciences as education, included guiding students in structuring articles, selecting publication forums, framing their investigations according to journal-specific requirements, and addressing review feedback collectively. Despite receiving a great deal of support, doctoral students were usually first authors of their articles. While doctoral students needed much support in the first article, their contribution became increasingly central in subsequent ones. Because of rising academic standards, however, senior researchers’ support continued to be important in later articles. Intellectual socialization to shared academic knowledge practices effectively boosts the development of academic competence allowing doctoral students gradually to make more productive contribution to joint knowledge-creation efforts.