ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015
Quantifying the impact of weak, strong, and super ties in scientific careers.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed.
- Conferences at a crossroads: networking, serendipity, and the cost of showing up.Materials horizons · 2026Review
- The role of professional networks and institutional prestige in shaping the first career moves of scholars.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Uncovering simultaneous breakthroughs with a robust measure of disruptiveness.Science advances · 2026Article
- Gender differences in collaboration and career progression in physics.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Citation manipulation through citation mills and pre-print servers.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Mid-career pitfall of consecutive success in science.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Productive scientists are associated with lower disruption in scientific publishing.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Medical researchers' perceptions regarding research evaluation: a web-based survey in Japan.BMJ open · 2024Article
- Collaboration and topic switches in science.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Quantifying the impact of strong ties in international scientific research collaboration.PloS one · 2023Article
- Continued collaboration shortens the transition period of scientists who move to another institution.Scientometrics · 2023Article
- Global Maps of Avian Leukosis Viruses: Research Trends and Themes Based on Networking.Veterinary sciences · 2022Article
- Untangling the network effects of productivity and prominence among scientists.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Impactful scientists have higher tendency to involve collaborators in new topics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- The anatomy of social dynamics in escape rooms.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Scientific success from the perspective of the strength of weak ties.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- The Philosophy of Outliers: Reintegrating Rare Events Into Biological Science.Integrative and comparative biology · 2022Article
- Collaboration enhances career progression in academic science, especially for female researchers.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Cooperation patterns of members in networks during co-creation.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Interplay between success and patterns of human collaboration: case study of a Thai Research Institute.Scientific reports · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Scientists are frequently faced with the important decision to start or terminate a creative partnership. This process can be influenced by strategic motivations, as early career researchers are pursuers, whereas senior researchers are typically attractors, of new collaborative opportunities. Focusing on the longitudinal aspects of scientific collaboration, we analyzed 473 collaboration profiles using an egocentric perspective that accounts for researcher-specific characteristics and provides insight into a range of topics, from career achievement and sustainability to team dynamics and efficiency. From more than 166,000 collaboration records, we quantify the frequency distributions of collaboration duration and tie strength, showing that collaboration networks are dominated by weak ties characterized by high turnover rates. We use analytic extreme value thresholds to identify a new class of indispensable super ties, the strongest of which commonly exhibit >50% publication overlap with the central scientist. The prevalence of super ties suggests that they arise from career strategies based upon cost, risk, and reward sharing and complementary skill matching. We then use a combination of descriptive and panel regression methods to compare the subset of publications coauthored with a super tie to the subset without one, controlling for pertinent features such as career age, prestige, team size, and prior group experience. We find that super ties contribute to above-average productivity and a 17% citation increase per publication, thus identifying these partnerships--the analog of life partners--as a major factor in science career development.
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Registered trials
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