The amount of published scientific research has been doubling almost every 15 years (Fortunato et al.). This is paired with an increasing amount of data and tools of analysis that can be used to understand the dynamics of scientific research. Contandriopoulos et al., Qi et al., Fortunato et al., and Li et al.’s findings are used to better understand these dynamics, how they lead to impactful research output, and how the roles individual researchers play in the network of science affects that impactful output.

Scientific research can be described as “a complex, self-organizing, and constantly evolving multi-scale network” (Fortunato et al., 2018). This “multi-scale network” of scientific research has many elements of connectivity– fields, institutions, and works cited by a given publication are all a part of the network and can be analyzed to understand the patterns they affect. All of the researchers above used this network structure as a tool for analysis, focusing especially on the importance of collaborators within this network on a researcher’s career productivity and impact.

Contandriopoulos et al. examined how the diversity of a researcher’s collaboration network may predict the researcher’s career impact. Researchers who play more of a bridging role between different groups and communities within the research network are likely to produce more influential work (Contandriopoulos et al., 2016). Researchers who prioritize their research productivity should diversify their collaborators and communities to improve their structural position and make novel connections. While a researcher’s choice of collaborators will not be made solely based on the potential for that collaborator to be a novel connection, the impact of that collaboration on the researcher’s structural position should be considered if the researcher hopes to maximize their productive output over their careers. At the same time, we have seen that there are incentives in place that keep researchers choosing more conservative research topics and collaborations (Fortunato et al., 2018). A researcher’s awareness of the importance of their structural position may help them break free of their community silo that could be limiting their research impact.

In addition to considering a researcher’s position within the network of science, it is important to understand how key collaborators can play a role in boosting a researcher’s career. When this network effect is examined, it is clear to see that the impact of collaborating with top scientists is very effective at increasing the future impact of an early researcher’s career, and that effect increases for researchers the earlier they are in their career (Qi et al., 2017; Li et al., 2019). While there are multiple ways to define top scientists, the general trend holds that having top collaborators on a researcher’s early publications significantly increases the likelihood of that researcher becoming a top scientist. Li et al. found that the positive effect of this top collaborator is most significant when the early-career researcher has one or fewer of the following: is associated with a top 10% institution, is in the top 10% of publications for their career phase, is in the top 10% of citations received for their career phase. If a researcher is otherwise productive or has access to a prestigious institution, the impacts of that top collaborator are less significant. Inversely, this shows that it is especially important for researchers who have fewer institutional advantages or are less familiar with how the scientific research community operates to find top collaborators to help boost their careers.

The fact that the impact of these top collaborators is greater the earlier they occur in a researcher’s career (Qi et al., 2017; Li et al., 2019) means that when students are least knowledgeable about the world of scientific research is when their decisions may be of highest impact for their future careers as scientists. It should be noted that while the impact of collaborating with top scientists is significant, Qi et al. found that this relationship is not linear. There are diminishing returns to collaborating with an increasingly exceptional scientists, and this is an indication that an early researcher does not need to be extraordinarily selective and that likely any scientist in the top 10% of their field would be a valuable boost to an early researcher’s career.

These findings suggest that there is likely significant untapped potential in the scientific research community (Li et al., 2019), and a more thorough understanding of these dynamics may lead to institutional policies that improve the output of impactful scientific research over coming years. It is especially important for young and early researchers to understand the dynamics of the scientific research network and take the time to consider how the decisions they make regarding their collaborators and the communities they engage with may affect their structural position in the scientific research community and impact their future career impact.