The innovation trade-off: how following superstars shapes academic novelty
Abstract Academic success is distributed unequally; a few top scientists receive the bulk of attention, citations, and resources. However, do these “superstars” foster leadership in scientific innovation? We employ a series of information-theoretic measures that quantify novelty, innovation, and imp...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Springer Nature
2025-07-01
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| Series: | Humanities & Social Sciences Communications |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05124-z |
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| author | Sean Kelty Raiyan Abdul Baten Adiba Mahbub Proma Ehsan Hoque Johan Bollen Gourab Ghoshal |
| author_facet | Sean Kelty Raiyan Abdul Baten Adiba Mahbub Proma Ehsan Hoque Johan Bollen Gourab Ghoshal |
| author_sort | Sean Kelty |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract Academic success is distributed unequally; a few top scientists receive the bulk of attention, citations, and resources. However, do these “superstars” foster leadership in scientific innovation? We employ a series of information-theoretic measures that quantify novelty, innovation, and impact from scholarly citation networks, and compare the academic output of scientists in the American Physical Society corpus with varying levels of connections to superstar scientists. The strength of connection is based on the frequency of citations to superstar papers, which is also related to the frequency of collaboration. We find that while strongly-connected scientists publish more, garner more citations, and produce moderately more diverse content, this comes at a cost of lower innovation, less disruption, and higher redundancy of ideas. Further, once one removes papers co-authored with superstars, the academic output of these strongly connected scientists greatly diminishes. In contrast, authors who publish at the same rate without the benefit of collaborations with scientific superstars produce papers that are more innovative, more disruptive, and have comparable citation rates, once one controls for the transferred prestige of superstars. On balance, our results indicate that academia pays a price by focusing attention and resources on superstars. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-0b90eccde3ca40b5956162e48a5e9481 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2662-9992 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-07-01 |
| publisher | Springer Nature |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Humanities & Social Sciences Communications |
| spelling | doaj-art-0b90eccde3ca40b5956162e48a5e94812025-08-20T03:45:27ZengSpringer NatureHumanities & Social Sciences Communications2662-99922025-07-0112111310.1057/s41599-025-05124-zThe innovation trade-off: how following superstars shapes academic noveltySean Kelty0Raiyan Abdul Baten1Adiba Mahbub Proma2Ehsan Hoque3Johan Bollen4Gourab Ghoshal5University of RochesterUniversity of South FloridaUniversity of RochesterUniversity of RochesterLuddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University BloomingtonUniversity of RochesterAbstract Academic success is distributed unequally; a few top scientists receive the bulk of attention, citations, and resources. However, do these “superstars” foster leadership in scientific innovation? We employ a series of information-theoretic measures that quantify novelty, innovation, and impact from scholarly citation networks, and compare the academic output of scientists in the American Physical Society corpus with varying levels of connections to superstar scientists. The strength of connection is based on the frequency of citations to superstar papers, which is also related to the frequency of collaboration. We find that while strongly-connected scientists publish more, garner more citations, and produce moderately more diverse content, this comes at a cost of lower innovation, less disruption, and higher redundancy of ideas. Further, once one removes papers co-authored with superstars, the academic output of these strongly connected scientists greatly diminishes. In contrast, authors who publish at the same rate without the benefit of collaborations with scientific superstars produce papers that are more innovative, more disruptive, and have comparable citation rates, once one controls for the transferred prestige of superstars. On balance, our results indicate that academia pays a price by focusing attention and resources on superstars.https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05124-z |
| spellingShingle | Sean Kelty Raiyan Abdul Baten Adiba Mahbub Proma Ehsan Hoque Johan Bollen Gourab Ghoshal The innovation trade-off: how following superstars shapes academic novelty Humanities & Social Sciences Communications |
| title | The innovation trade-off: how following superstars shapes academic novelty |
| title_full | The innovation trade-off: how following superstars shapes academic novelty |
| title_fullStr | The innovation trade-off: how following superstars shapes academic novelty |
| title_full_unstemmed | The innovation trade-off: how following superstars shapes academic novelty |
| title_short | The innovation trade-off: how following superstars shapes academic novelty |
| title_sort | innovation trade off how following superstars shapes academic novelty |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05124-z |
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