ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2025
Postdoc publications and citations link to academic retention and faculty success.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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.
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.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Associations between external learning contexts and college students' learning resilience through academic self-efficacy and perceived campus belonging.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Researcher population pyramids: Tracking demographic and gender trajectories across countries.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Perspectives of biomedical trainees during a time of policy disruption.Nature medicine · 2025Article
- Rethinking postdoc careers through the science of science.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Postdoctoral training is a career stage often described as a demanding and anxiety-laden time when many promising PhDs see their academic dreams slip away due to circumstances beyond their control. We use a unique dataset of academic publishing and careers to chart the more or less successful postdoctoral paths. We build a measure of academic success on the citation patterns two to five years into a faculty career. Then, we monitor how students' postdoc positions-in terms of relocation, change of topic, and early well-cited papers-relate to their early-career success. One key finding is that the postdoc period seems more important than the doctoral training to achieve this form of success. This is especially interesting in light of the many studies of academic faculty hiring that link Ph.D. granting institutions and hires, omitting the postdoc stage. Another group of findings can be summarized as a Goldilocks principle: It seems beneficial to change one's direction, but not too much.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.