站在巨人的肩膀上:明星科学家如何影响其合作者

Standing on the shoulders of giants: How star scientists influence their coauthors

RESEARCH POLICY · 2022
被引 19
人大 AFT50ABS 4*

中文导读

研究明星科学家(如诺贝尔奖得主)的合作是否给其合作者带来引用优势,发现合作像棱镜一样降低质量不确定性,使合作者的论文更受关注,并加速“睡美人”论文的重新发现。

Abstract

We examine whether and when star scientist collaborations produce indirect peer effects. We theorize that a star's social status causes a collaboration to act as a prism; it reduces quality uncertainty, leading to increased recognition of coauthors' ideas. We identify two moderators of prisms, other scientists' quality uncertainty and awareness of the collaboration, and link prisms to “sleeping beauties”, articles that are initially overlooked and then rediscovered later. Empirically, we examine the effect on citations of collaborating with a star who either won, or – serving as the control group – who was nominated for but did not win, the Nobel Prize in Physics. We find that articles by the winners' coauthors (and which were published prior to the focal coauthor's first collaboration with the winner) receive a citation boost after the Nobel Prize is awarded, relative to articles by the coauthors of nominees, and that awareness and quality uncertainty moderate this effect. We further find that this difference in citations causes sleeping beauties written by the coauthors of Nobel Prize winners to be rediscovered faster. Our results clarify how star scientists' indirect peer effects impact their coauthors and, through sleeping beauties, how prisms matter for science more broadly.

科学社会学创新与知识扩散学术影响力合作网络