Evidence map›Paper›PMID 35939670›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022

Impactful scientists have higher tendency to involve collaborators in new topics.

An Zeng, Ying Fan, Zengru Di, Yougui Wang, Shlomo Havlin

Open access · greenAbstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
7citing papers in PubMed
5.5field-weighted citation impact, top 3% of its field
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

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.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

7 citing papers in PubMed, 45 citations in OpenAlex.

  1. The distinctive innovation patterns and network embeddedness of scientific prizewinners.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
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  3. UNRAVELING CRP/cAMP-MEDIATED METABOLIC REGULATION INbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025
    Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.

An ZengSchool of Systems Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
Ying FanSchool of Systems Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
Zengru DiSchool of Systems Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
Yougui WangSchool of Systems Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.ORCID 0000-0002-4261-7637
Shlomo HavlinDepartment of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel.ORCID 0000-0002-9974-5920
Beijing Normal University · CNBar-Ilan University · IL

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

In scientific research, collaboration is one of the most effective ways to take advantage of new ideas, skills, and resources and for performing interdisciplinary research. Although collaboration networks have been intensively studied, the question of how individual scientists choose collaborators to study a new research topic remains almost unexplored. Here, we investigate the statistics and mechanisms of collaborations of individual scientists along their careers, revealing that, in general, collaborators are involved in significantly fewer topics than expected from a controlled surrogate. In particular, we find that highly productive scientists tend to have a higher fraction of single-topic collaborators, while highly cited-i.e., impactful-scientists have a higher fraction of multitopic collaborators. We also suggest a plausible mechanism for this distinction. Moreover, we investigate the cases where scientists involve existing collaborators in a new topic. We find that, compared to productive scientists, impactful scientists show strong preference of collaboration with high-impact scientists on a new topic. Finally, we validate our findings by investigating active scientists in different years and across different disciplines.

Indexed as

Cooperative BehaviorInterdisciplinary ResearchLaboratory PersonnelHumanscontrolled surrogateimpactful scientistsresearch topicsscientific collaboration

Identifiers

PMID35939670
PMCPMC9388131
OpenAlexW4290725181

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC-ND
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.