How to deal with unbalanced collaborations? As a postdoc in a theoretical STEM field, I have had many wonderful collaborations where all authors contribute non-trivially to the final product. However, there was also many &quot;unbalanced&quot; collaborations: where one author does 90% of the work for example. I am not talking about a situation in which a senior professor is automatically given authorship because of politics. For this question, let's say that we talk about collaborations between researchers of the same academic age/position (e.g. all postdocs).
These unbalanced collaborations are often not a problem per se but can be draining and time-consuming in the long run. To give an example, I have had collaborations where I was almost feeling like a PhD advisor to my collaborator, having to explain/redo everything. In contrast, the balanced collaborations that I experienced were always extremely enriching and efficient in comparison.
As a young and inexperienced researcher, my question is: what is the best approach to choose collaborators?
I see two extreme options:

Don't worry about it. Accept and nurture every collaboration as they come. If your collaborators are not useful, take the time to help them and make them grow, even at the expense of your own growth. At some point, you might also be the &quot;useless&quot; collaborator and you will be thankful to having been accepted in the collaboration.
Avoid unbalanced collaborations by seeking only collaborators you can benefit from. This is probably the best approach career-wise. However, I feel like it can lead to toxic behaviors which might do more harm than good in the long run.

Even though there is probably not a right answer to the question, this is something that has been bothering me lately, and I would benefit a lot from insights of more experienced researchers.
Many thanks!
In any collaboration, some degree of imbalance is inevitable. I've been on both sides of the matter, and the question I've always used to guide my collaboration decision is:
&quot;Are all of the collaborating parties benefiting from the relationship?&quot;
There are a lot of ways to evaluate this question, some very pragmatic and some very personal. Here are some factors one might consider: joy or lack thereof, how the relationship affects future job prospects, impact of the work, access to interesting future projects, opportunity cost for working on the project. It sounds from your description like your answer right now is no, so you should probably stop working with the person in question. Before doing so, ask yourself: &quot;what would change this working relationship for me? Is there a way to make that change happen?&quot; You might find some reasonable requests that encourage continuation, but more importantly this will help you wrap things up better. You do have an ethical obligation to bow out gracefully, though nothing is forcing you to and this may not be possible.