ArticleScientific reports2023
Early-career factors largely determine the future impact of prominent researchers: evidence across eight scientific fields.
Article in Scientific reports, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 64 citations in OpenAlex.
- Invest where impact begins: recommendations from Breast Cancer Research Foundation Early Career Investigator Working Group (Part 1 of 2).NPJ breast cancer · 2026Article
- Perspectives of Early to Mid-Career health professionals: Future public health challenges and opportunities in the Asia-Pacific region.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- The Trials and Aspirations of an Early Career Researcher Advisory Board.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Correlation of Income Instability With 12 Non-Communicable Disease Risks in Korea: A Prospective Cohort Study.Journal of Korean medical science · 2025Article
- Zoonotic parasitic diseases in South America: why early-career researchers matter.Parasitology · 2025Article
- Postdoc publications and citations link to academic retention and faculty success.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
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 throughout their career after 10, 15 and 20 years. Our findings show that these few early-career factors help predict researchers' impact later in their careers. Our research thus points to the need to enhance fairness and career mobility among scientists who have not had a jump start early on.
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Registered trials
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