Related papers: Where postdoctoral journeys lead
Scientific innovation often comes from researchers who pivot across disciplines. However, prior work found that established researchers face productivity penalties when pivoting. Here, we investigate the consequences of pivoting at the…
This article analyzes the structure of perceived academic success. We combine survey data from 10,848 Polish scientists with their Scopus bibliometric data at the individual level. We use polychoric correlations, exploratory factor…
Women comprise the majority of students and early-career scholars in psychology, yet they are less likely to remain active in research over time. This pattern raises a central question: At what stages of academic careers do women…
The process of discovery in the physical, biological and medical sciences can be painstakingly slow. Most experiments fail, and the time from initiation of research until a new advance reaches commercial production can span 20 years. This…
We have examined the success rates of 19 American, Canadian, Australian, and Dutch graduate programs in producing astronomers. A 20-year baseline was considered (1975-1994), incorporating 897 PhD recipients. The major conclusion from our…
The road to becoming an astronomer is exciting, but often fraught with danger and conflicting messages. A PhD student is inundated with catch-phrases such as "publish or perish" and "it's not about the quantity, but the quality of work".…
Researchers are no longer limited to producing knowledge; in today's complex world, they also address societal challenges by engaging in policymaking. Although involvement in policymaking has expanded, direct empirical evidence of its…
The mobility of scientists between different universities and countries is important to foster knowledge exchange. At the same time, the potential mobility is restricted by geographic and institutional constraints, which leads to temporal…
The expectation that scientific productivity follows regular patterns over a career underpins many scholarly evaluations. However, recent studies of individual productivity patterns reveal a puzzle: the average number of papers published…
Advisor-advisee relationship is important in academic networks due to its universality and necessity. Despite the increasing desire to analyze the career of newcomers, however, the outcomes of different collaboration patterns between…
One of the most important debates is currently focusing on specifying the training that university teachers must receive for their professional practice. Improving it in higher education is extremely important not only for the scientific…
The creativity of scientists often manifests as localized hot streaks of significant success. Understanding the underlying mechanisms of these influential phases can enhance the effectiveness of support systems and funding allocation,…
We introduce Goldilocks Selection, a technique for faster model training which selects a sequence of training points that are "just right". We propose an information-theoretic acquisition function -- the reducible validation loss -- and…
Using newly-assembled data from 1980 through 2024, we show that 25% of scientifically-active, US-trained STEM PhD graduates leave the US within 15 years of graduating. Leave rates are lower in the life sciences and higher in AI and quantum…
In this work we investigate the determinants of professors' career advancement in Italian universities. From the analyses, it emerges that the fundamental determinant of an academic candidate's success is not scientific merit, but rather…
Publication statistics are ubiquitous in the ratings of scientific achievement, with citation counts and paper tallies factoring into an individual's consideration for postdoctoral positions, junior faculty, tenure, and even visa status for…
Globally trained scientific labor is a substantial component of U.S. universities, yet the organizational mechanisms linking foreign degree training to elite scientific output remain poorly understood. We link comprehensive U.S. faculty…
Interdisciplinary research is fundamental when it comes to tackling complex problems in our highly interlinked world, and is on the rise globally. Yet, it is unclear why--in an increasingly competitive academic environment--one should…
Biological age is an important sociodemographic factor in studies on academic careers (research productivity, scholarly impact, and collaboration patterns). It is assumed that the academic age, or the time elapsed from the first…
A substantial fraction of students who complete their college education at a public university in the United States begin their journey at one of the 935 public two-year colleges. While the number of four-year colleges offering bachelor's…