The importance of collaborators on a researcher’s success was a key focus of all of the researchers in this review. The “multiscale network” (Fortunato et al, 2018) 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.

Contandriopoulos et al examined how the diversity of a researcher’s collaboration network may predict the researcher’s success. 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). It appears to be important for researchers who prioritize their research productivity to diversify their collaborators and communities to improve their structural position and make novel connections. The decision of who a researcher decides to collaborate with will not be made solely based on the potential for that collaborator to be a novel connection, but the impact 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 impact of their structural position may help them break free of their community silo that could be limiting their research impact.