eprintid: 2370
rev_number: 7
eprint_status: archive
userid: 6
dir: disk0/00/00/23/70
datestamp: 2014-11-17 11:38:14
lastmod: 2014-11-17 11:38:14
status_changed: 2014-11-17 11:38:14
type: article
metadata_visibility: show
creators_name: Petersen, Alexander M.
creators_name: Fortunato, Santo
creators_name: Pan, Raj K.
creators_name: Kaski, Kimmo
creators_name: Penner, Orion
creators_name: Rungi, Armando
creators_name: Riccaboni, Massimo
creators_name: Stanley, H. Eugene
creators_name: Pammolli, Fabio
creators_id: alexander.petersen@imtlucca.it
creators_id: 
creators_id: 
creators_id: 
creators_id: orion.penner@imtlucca.it
creators_id: armando.rungi@imtlucca.it
creators_id: massimo.riccaboni@imtlucca.it
creators_id: 
creators_id: f.pammolli@imtlucca.it
title: Reputation and impact in academic careers
ispublished: pub
subjects: H1
subjects: Q1
subjects: Z665
divisions: EIC
full_text_status: none
keywords: computational sociology; science of science; networks of networks; Matthew effect; sociophysics

abstract: Reputation is an important social construct in science, which enables informed quality assessments of both publications and careers of scientists in the absence of complete systemic information. However, the relation between reputation and career growth of an individual remains poorly understood, despite recent proliferation of quantitative research evaluation methods. Here, we develop an original framework for measuring how a publication’s citation rate Δc depends on the reputation of its central author i, in addition to its net citation count c. To estimate the strength of the reputation effect, we perform a longitudinal analysis on the careers of 450 highly cited scientists, using the total citations Ci of each scientist as his/her reputation measure. We find a citation crossover c×, which distinguishes the strength of the reputation effect. For publications with c < c×, the author’s reputation is found to dominate the annual citation rate. Hence, a new publication may gain a significant early advantage corresponding to roughly a 66% increase in the citation rate for each tenfold increase in Ci. However, the reputation effect becomes negligible for highly cited publications meaning that, for c ≥ c×, the citation rate measures scientific impact more transparently. In addition, we have developed a stochastic reputation model, which is found to reproduce numerous statistical observations for real careers, thus providing insight into the microscopic mechanisms underlying cumulative advantage in science. 
date: 2014-10
date_type: published
publication: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
volume: 111
number: 43
pagerange: 15316-15321
id_number: doi:10.1073/pnas.1323111111
refereed: TRUE
issn: 1091-6490
official_url: http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1323111111
citation:   Petersen, Alexander M. and Fortunato, Santo and Pan, Raj K. and Kaski, Kimmo and Penner, Orion and Rungi, Armando and Riccaboni, Massimo and Stanley, H. Eugene and Pammolli, Fabio  Reputation and impact in academic careers.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111 (43).  pp. 15316-15321.  ISSN 1091-6490      (2014)