Evidence map›Paper›PMID 36399560›Full record

ArticleScience advances2022

Labor advantages drive the greater productivity of faculty at elite universities.

Sam Zhang, K Hunter Wapman, Daniel B Larremore, Aaron Clauset

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Science advances, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
16citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
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

16 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Review
  3. Tenure and research trajectories.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025
    Article
  4. Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Article
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  11. Article
  12. Scientific civility and academic performance.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024
    Article
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Article
  16. Article
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

4 authors.

Sam ZhangDepartment of Applied Mathematics, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.ORCID 0000-0002-0371-9526
K Hunter WapmanDepartment of Computer Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.ORCID 0000-0003-2518-841X
Daniel B LarremoreDepartment of Computer Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.ORCID 0000-0001-5273-5234
Aaron ClausetDepartment of Computer Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.ORCID 0000-0002-3529-8746

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Faculty at prestigious institutions dominate scientific discourse, producing a disproportionate share of all research publications. Environmental prestige can drive such epistemic disparity, but the mechanisms by which it causes increased faculty productivity remain unknown. Here, we combine employment, publication, and federal survey data for 78,802 tenure-track faculty at 262 PhD-granting institutions in the American university system to show through multiple lines of evidence that the greater availability of funded graduate and postdoctoral labor at more prestigious institutions drives the environmental effect of prestige on productivity. In particular, greater environmental prestige leads to larger faculty-led research groups, which drive higher faculty productivity, primarily in disciplines with group collaboration norms. In contrast, productivity does not increase substantially with prestige for faculty publications without group members or for group members themselves. The disproportionate scientific productivity of elite researchers can be largely explained by their substantial labor advantage rather than inherent differences in talent.

Identifiers

PMID36399560
PMCPMC9674273

What OpenQuestion holds

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LicenceCC BY-NC
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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.