Early-career factors largely determine the future impact of prominent researchers: evidence across eight scientific fields.

ABSTRACT: Can we help predict the future impact of researchers using early-career factors? We analyze early-career factors of the world's 100 most prominent researchers across 8 scientific fields and identify four key drivers in researchers' initial career: working at a top 25 ranked university, publishing a paper in a top 5 ranked journal, publishing most papers in top quartile (high-impact) journals and co-authoring with other prominent researchers in their field. We find that over 95% of prominent researchers across multiple fields had at least one of these four features in the first 5 years of their career. We find that the most prominent scientists who had an early career advantage in terms of citations and h-index are more likely to have had all four features, and that this advantage persists

SUBMITTER: Krauss A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10620415 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature