Collaboration enhances career progression in academic science, especially for female researchers.
View / Open Files
Publication Date
2021-09-08Journal Title
Proc Biol Sci
ISSN
0962-8452
Publisher
The Royal Society
Volume
288
Issue
1958
Pages
20210219
Language
eng
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Physical Medium
Print-Electronic
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
van der Wal, J. E., Thorogood, R., & Horrocks, N. (2021). Collaboration enhances career progression in academic science, especially for female researchers.. Proc Biol Sci, 288 (1958), 20210219. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0219
Abstract
Collaboration and diversity are increasingly promoted in science. Yet how collaborations influence academic career progression, and whether this differs by gender, remains largely unknown. Here, we use co-authorship ego networks to quantify collaboration behaviour and career progression of a cohort of contributors to biennial International Society of Behavioral Ecology meetings (1992, 1994, 1996). Among this cohort, women were slower and less likely to become a principal investigator (PI; approximated by having at least three last-author publications) and published fewer papers over fewer years (i.e. had shorter academic careers) than men. After adjusting for publication number, women also had fewer collaborators (lower adjusted network size) and published fewer times with each co-author (lower adjusted tie strength), albeit more often with the same group of collaborators (higher adjusted clustering coefficient). Authors with stronger networks were more likely to become a PI, and those with less clustered networks did so more quickly. Women, however, showed a stronger positive relationship with adjusted network size (increased career length) and adjusted tie strength (increased likelihood to become a PI). Finally, early-career network characteristics correlated with career length. Our results suggest that large and varied collaboration networks are positively correlated with career progression, especially for women.
Sponsorship
Natural Environment Research Council (NE/K00929X/1)
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0219
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/330368
Statistics
Total file downloads (since January 2020). For more information on metrics see the
IRUS guide.