How to do scientific excellence: Mechanisms of success and inequality

The world of science still includes many inequalities. Career success is often determined by gender, nationality or citation patterns that are opaque to the outside world. Getting ahead in this highly competitive environment is not just about an individual's scientific success alone, but also about the social connections they are able to make. This is particularly true in the early stages of a career characterised by high “mortality rate", but also later on, when the ability to maintain motivation and autonomy in research or to integrate others into one's own research topic is crucial. The intricacies of the links and the progression of various stages of successful scientists’ careers have now been described by SYRI National Institute researchers in a major study.

"Academics in the early stages of their careers are in a different situation. The position differs for those who already have a reputation, and entirely different for researchers who have already reached the apex and create their teams relatively independently," said one of the authors of the study, Jiří Mudrák of SYRI and the Psychological Institute of the Academy of Sciences.

The conclusions of the study are based on interviews with academics employed in various positions (from postdoctoral fellows to full professors) at twelve faculties of four large Czech public universities. In all cases, these were experts who met the criteria of "research excellence" - i.e. those who had published in top journals in the last three years or met other criteria of excellence, including winning prestigious fellowships or success in grant competitions.

These successful scientists typically shaped their career paths in a way that led to a gradual accumulation of career advantages. For example, they often took a pragmatic approach to raising money for further development, while at the same time trying to avoid activities that presented barriers to their research, such as extensive teaching, working outside academia, entering leadership/administrative roles or engaging in burdensome administrative tasks. "But their main motivator was the desire to discover," Mudrák said.

The young researchers in the study often reflected on their "dependence" on someone older and how they coped with this dependent position. "Successful collaboration with senior academics facilitates the development of their knowledge, skills, academic prestige and motivation, and determines their ability to move into an autonomous position, which is a milestone defining the next phase of career development," said Kateřina Zábrodská, who co-authored the study.

In general, early career researchers are at high risk of "sudden death". Most postdocs leave academia even though they would prefer to stay. Reasons include excessive competition for funding, lack of suitable jobs or contacts. Current research has confirmed that support from supervisors, mentors, institutions and integration into social networks facilitated by senior academics is a key help at this stage, as is the potential international aspect of collaboration. This allows young researchers to develop key research skills and expand their network of collaborators in a way that would otherwise be difficult to obtain.

Success in grant competitions is also crucial for scientists to advance to the next level. "Mid-career academics have a greater sense of autonomy and control. However, they also have to cope with the increasing demands of their many roles in the workplaces, leading them to spend less time on research and more time on administrative tasks. Academics, and even more so female academics, of course, find work-life balance difficult to attain. This is one of the reasons why many of them return from internships abroad at this point, because they are losing contact with their families,” Zábrodská said.

The study also included successful scientists in senior positions who already had extensive access to resources and were in a situation where a number of other people were largely dependent on them. “Interestingly, our respondents at this stage often avoided entering formal leadership positions, even when they were acting as informal leaders, supervisors or mentors in a way that at least partially met the needs of younger academics. The circle was thus essentially closing, because they represented the ticket to the world of excellent science for budding scientists," Zábrodská added.

The study shows that the science system does not offer a level playing field for male and female scientists. It turns out that successful scientists of both genders are able to navigate strategically within the system of existing inequalities, enabling them to conduct high quality research. From another perspective, however, it may appear that they command a disproportionate share of work resources at the expense of other colleagues providing different key academic activities, such as teaching.

“If they want to be successful in the existing system, scientists must strive to accumulate benefits within that system, allowing them a great deal of autonomy and creative freedom in the senior phase of their career. However, academic institutions should deliberately address the processes related to the accumulation of benefits so that, for example, the careers of promising researchers are less dependent on their relationships with senior academics or that access to resources is not overly dependent on the position of the researcher in the system," Mudrák suggests, adding that providing easier and broader access to resources could in many ways be more beneficial to the long-term development of research excellence than simply increasing the total amount of resources available, if these resources are only available to a limited number of actors.

Link to the study: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11024-024-09567-7