Multiple Unregistered Authors for Academic Journal

I am building a site to be used as an academic journal published by a school-affiliated organization. The journal will publish articles submitted by the students, as well as contributing authors from around the country. Is there a way to “credit” or “list” someone as the author of a post without creating an entire new author profile for each contributing author. I only ask because, over time, this number would grow to be quite large I would assume.

And if crediting the unregistered authors cannot be done, would having a large number of “contributing authors” in the back end cause any problems (assuming the proper settings were made to limit their control over the site)?

Thanks for any help/advice you can provide…