Event description
Abstract: Should I pursue academic independence early on, or continue collaborating with senior scholars in my field for as long as possible? Should I venture into interdisciplinary research, or focus on a clearly defined, easily identifiable topic? Should I aim for a few innovative publications, or divide my work into multiple incremental papers—the so-called ‘salami-slicing’ approach? These are just a few of the many questions that keep early career researchers (ECRs) up at night as they try to navigate the best path to success in today’s increasingly competitive research landscape. Academic success is a multifaceted concept. Yet, it is often reduced to just a few ‘observables’ and measurable indicators—most notably, the number of publications an author has and the citations those publications receive over time. Whether this is a good idea or not is beyond the scope of this talk, it is just the current state of affairs. One advantage of adopting such a pragmatic view is that publication data exhibit remarkable statistical regularities. These patterns can be exploited to build analyses, models, and—at times—even predictions of an ECR’s academic trajectory. The quantitative study of scientific impact and success falls under the domain of the Science of Science [1], itself a subfield of the broader Science of Success, which aims to uncover the drivers of achievement across many domains—often using tools from the study of complex systems in Physics.