Scientists working in a lab may not be sequined socialites attending gin-soaked jazz parties in the 1920s, but according to a new study, they have something in common: They’re more likely to prosper if those who’ve come before are already successful. A phenomenon similar to an economic principle known as the Great Gatsby Curve—which describes how generational wealth predisposes one’s children to higher incomes—also plays out among scientists, argue the researchers behind the work, out today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
Having a well-cited mentor, they find, sets a junior researcher up for success, whereas lacking one can lead to a career spent on its periphery.
Although the finding may not surprise people familiar with working in academia, it shows that the system can be unfair to highly capable scientists who—through no fault of their own—don’t get to become the protégé of a top scientist, says Shulamit Kahn, an economist at Boston University who was not involved in the work.
Having seen firsthand how important citations are to a researcher’s career, the authors, led by Ye Sun, a mathematician from Southeast University in China, were curious to find out how closely mentees’ citation records matched those of their mentors, and whether citation success can be inherited.
Using information from two databases, one that maps academic relationships and another that contains bibliometric information including citations, the authors ranked the members of 245,500 mentor-mentee pairs worldwide who published almost 10 million papers in 22 academic disciplines. The pairs worked together between 2000 and 2013, so the authors could track work published up to 5 years after the official mentor-mentee relationship ended and then to allow time for citations to such papers to accumulate until 2023. After ranking the researchers in each discipline according to the number of citations their papers received, the authors found that mentors who ranked higher had mentees who ranked higher, too.
“It shows how the position of the mentor can be inherited,” says University College London social scientist and study co-author Fabio Caccioli.
Sun and colleagues say this is, in effect, the academic equivalent of a Great Gatsby Curve. Status and resources trickle down from mentor to mentee, making it harder for those from a less fortunate background to progress—just as wealth passes down through generations. And the effect became stronger over the time period studied. Caccioli says that’s consistent with other observations that suggest junior researchers’ careers are increasingly driven by the prominence and reputation of their supervisors and collaborators.
The researchers also considered different types of mentorship, such as whether the mentee was a graduate student or postdoc, and the prestige of their institution. They found the link between rankings was strongest for graduate students and their mentors, which likely reflects how critical a productive mentor is for a budding scientist’s success, the authors say.
Working at a prestigious institution—as measured by the total number of citations of all authors who work there—offered some protection against the disadvantage of a low-ranking mentor. Such mentees were more likely than their peers at less prestigious institutions to break the cycle and go on to move up the ranks of the citation lists, the researchers add.
The results may not be surprising to many who have worked in academia and seen firsthand how prestige can propagate among generations. For years, social scientists have found examples of a phenomenon known as the Matthew effect in academia, describing how high-status researchers with numerous citations and grants tend to disproportionately accrue more of the same. Still, Caccioli says, understanding the factors that influence metrics such as citation counts—often used to assess a researcher’s ability—is important so they can be used judiciously, he adds.
“It’s important that metrics are handled with care because there are all these effect that can impact it,” he says. “If you just look at citations, maybe that’s not the whole story.”
Imperfect as they are, they may offer a clue to junior scientists looking to pick a mentor who will maximize their success. “Students should be told as undergraduates the importance of having a well-known mentor,” Kahn says.
