Related papers: The independence paradox in scientific careers
One interesting phenomenon that emerges from the typical structure of social networks is the friendship paradox. It states that your friends have on average more friends than you do. Recent efforts have explored variations of it, with…
Understanding the role of researchers who return to academia after prolonged inactivity, termed "comeback researchers", is crucial for developing inclusive models of scientific careers. This study investigates the structural and semantic…
A scientist may publish tens or hundreds of papers over a career, but these contributions are not evenly spaced in time. Sixty years of studies on career productivity patterns in a variety of fields suggest an intuitive and universal…
Interdisciplinary research increasingly fuels innovation, and is considered to be a key to tomorrow breakthrough. Yet little is known about whether interdisciplinary research manifests delayed impact. Here, we use the time to reach the…
The tremendous advances in computer science in the last few decades have provided the platform to address and solve complex problems using interdisciplinary research. In this paper, we investigate how the extent of interdisciplinarity in…
Despite persistent efforts in revealing the temporal patterns in scientific careers, little attention has been paid to the spatial patterns of scientific activities in the knowledge space. Here, drawing on millions of papers in six…
The combination of diverse, pre-existing knowledge is a common explanation for scientific breakthroughs. However, a paradox exists: while scientific output and the potential for such recombination have grown exponentially, the rate of…
Large language model (LLM) leaderboards rank AI models using standardized benchmarks and have become highly visible across computer science, despite known limitations in their reliability and robustness. Yet how they shape researchers'…
The Great Gatsby Curve measures the relationship between income inequality and intergenerational income persistence. By utilizing genealogical data of over 245,000 mentor-mentee pairs and their academic publications from 22 different…
Gender inequality in scientific careers has been extensively documented through aggregate measures such as total publications and cumulative citations, yet the temporal dynamics underlying these disparities remain largely unexplored. Here…
What factors affect a scientist's choice of research problem? Qualitative research in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science suggests that this choice is shaped by an "essential tension" between the professional demand for…
This research was a qualitative transcendental phenomenological exploration of astronomy identity formation among astronomy majors and physics majors engaged in astronomy research. Participants (N=10), all of whom identified with…
A common expectation is that career productivity peaks rather early and then gradually declines with seniority. But whether this holds true is still an open question. Here we investigate the productivity trajectories of almost 8,500…
This paper investigates the mechanisms underlying scientific stratification in the era of transition from elite to mass science. Existing scholarship has largely examined scientific stratification through the Matthew effect framework at the…
Universities have been expanding undergraduate data science programs. Involving graduate students in these new opportunities can foster their growth as data science educators. We describe two programs that employ a near-peer mentoring…
There is increasing interest among funding agencies to understand how they can best contribute to enhancing the socio-economic impact of research. Interdisciplinarity is often presented as a research mode that can facilitate impact but…
In a range of scientific coauthorship networks, transitions emerge in degree distributions, correlations between degrees and local clustering coefficients, etc. The existence of those transitions could be regarded as a result of the…
Despite broad acclaim for basic research, science is undergoing an applied shift that marginalizes basic scientists. This gap reflects an incomplete understanding of their distinctive roles, which prevents translating philosophical…
The mechanisms driving different types of scientific innovation through collaboration remain poorly understood. Here we develop a comprehensive framework analyzing over 14 million papers across 19 disciplines from 1960 to 2020 to unpack how…
The limited representation of women in STEM workforce is a concerning national issue. It has been found that the gender stratification is not due to the lack of talent amongst young females, but due to the lack of access to female role…