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Standing on the shoulders of giants: the effect of outstanding scientists on young collaborators’ careers

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  • Mengjiao Qi

    (Beijing Normal University)

  • An Zeng

    (Beijing Normal University)

  • Menghui Li

    (Beijing Institute of Science and Technology Intelligence)

  • Ying Fan

    (Beijing Normal University)

  • Zengru Di

    (Beijing Normal University)

Abstract

Collaboration is one of the key features in scientific research. With more and more knowledge accumulated in each discipline, individual researcher can only be an expert in some specific areas. As such, there are more and more multi-author papers nowadays. Many works in scientometrics have been devoted to analyze the structure of collaboration networks. However, how the collaboration impacts an author’s future career is much less studied in the literature. In this paper, we provide empirical evidence with American Physical Society data showing that collaboration with outstanding scientists (measured by their total citation) will significantly improve young researchers’ career. Interestingly, this effect is strongly nonlinear and subject to a power function with an exponent

Suggested Citation

  • Mengjiao Qi & An Zeng & Menghui Li & Ying Fan & Zengru Di, 2017. "Standing on the shoulders of giants: the effect of outstanding scientists on young collaborators’ careers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(3), pages 1839-1850, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:111:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-017-2328-8
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-017-2328-8
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    Cited by:

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    2. Jianlin Zhou & An Zeng & Ying Fan & Zengru Di, 2018. "Identifying important scholars via directed scientific collaboration networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(3), pages 1327-1343, March.
    3. Wang, Jiang-Pan & Guo, Qiang & Zhou, Lei & Liu, Jian-Guo, 2019. "Dynamic credit allocation for researchers," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 520(C), pages 208-216.
    4. Fenghua Wang & Ying Fan & An Zeng & Zengru Di, 2019. "Can we predict ESI highly cited publications?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(1), pages 109-125, January.
    5. Xie, Zheng, 2020. "Predicting publication productivity for researchers: A piecewise Poisson model," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3).
    6. Lubna Zafar & Nayyer Masood & Samreen Ayaz, 2023. "Impact of field of study (FoS) on authors’ citation trend," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(4), pages 2557-2576, April.
    7. Li Hou & Qiang Wu & Yundong Xie, 2022. "Does early publishing in top journals really predict long-term scientific success in the business field?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(11), pages 6083-6107, November.
    8. Shen, Hongquan & Cheng, Ying & Ju, Xiufang & Xie, Juan, 2022. "Rethinking the effect of inter-gender collaboration on research performance for scholars," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4).
    9. Rodrigo Dorantes-Gilardi & Aurora A. Ramírez-Álvarez & Diana Terrazas-Santamaría, 2021. "Is there a differentiated gender effect of collaboration with supercited authors? Evidence from early-career economists," Serie documentos de trabajo del Centro de Estudios Económicos 2021-05, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos.
    10. Xie, Zonglin & Xie, Zheng & Li, Jianping & Yang, Qian, 2018. "Exploring the influence of social activity on scientific career," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 500(C), pages 189-198.
    11. Xie, Qing & Zhang, Xinyuan & Kim, Giyeong & Song, Min, 2022. "Exploring the influence of coauthorship with top scientists on researchers’ affiliation, research topic, productivity, and impact," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3).
    12. António Correia & Hugo Paredes & Benjamim Fonseca, 2018. "Scientometric analysis of scientific publications in CSCW," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(1), pages 31-89, January.
    13. Zheng Xie, 2019. "A cooperative game model for the multimodality of coauthorship networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 121(1), pages 503-519, October.
    14. Rodrigo Dorantes-Gilardi & Aurora A. Ramírez-Álvarez & Diana Terrazas-Santamaría, 2023. "Is there a differentiated gender effect of collaboration with super-cited authors? Evidence from junior researchers in economics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(4), pages 2317-2336, April.
    15. Batista-Jr, Antônio de Abreu & Gouveia, Fábio Castro & Mena-Chalco, Jesús P., 2021. "Predicting the Q of junior researchers using data from the first years of publication," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2).
    16. Yuhao Zhou & Ruijie Wang & An Zeng, 2022. "Predicting the impact and publication date of individual scientists’ future papers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(4), pages 1867-1882, April.
    17. Xie, Zheng, 2020. "Predicting the number of coauthors for researchers: A learning model," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(2).

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