Characterizing scientists leaving science before their time: Evidence from mathematics

• Published in: Information processing & management Vol. 58; no. 5; p. 102661
• Main Authors: Zhao, Zhenyue, Bu, Yi, Li, Jiang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01-09-2021; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Mathematical analysis; Mathematics education; Productivity; Profession; Publishing; Science; Scientists; Scientometrics
• ISSN: 0306-4573; 1873-5371
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ipm.2021.102661

Scientists’ leaving scientific work at an age when they should have continued generating more scientific output inevitably leads to limited success in their careers as scientists. However, this phenomenon has received relatively little attention in science of science and scientometrics, relative to how frequently it occurs in academia. Motivated by this gap, this study seeks to identify and characterize scientists who leave the profession before the expected time in science, i.e., scientists whose productivity digresses from the normal pattern at a stage when they should be capable of publishing more papers. We first argue that simply using the termination of publishing as the sign of leaving the profession is inappropriate. Using termination of publishing as the only standard also leads to an underestimation of the overall productivity of certain types of scientists. Thus, we designed a novel measure to evaluate whether a scientist has left science. Utilizing a large-scale bibliographic dataset from Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG) in the field of mathematics, we identified over 10,000 scientists who left before their 20th career year, and paired each of them with a scientist who survived for longer than 25 years. We found that the characteristics in the first five years of the careers of the scientists who left early can be summarized as incompetency in their research abilities and a lack of collaboration with senior or highly cited authors. The implications of the findings are discussed.
•Failure in science has received a relatively small amount of attention in science of science and scientometrics, relative to their frequency. Motivated by this gap, this study seeks to identify and characterize "scientists who leave before their time (SLBTs)" by designing a novel measure.•Utilizing a large-scale bibliographic dataset from Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG) in the field of mathematics, we identified over 10,000 scientists who left before their 20th career year.•Scientists who left in the first five years of their career can be summarized as incompetency in their research abilities and a lack of collaboration with senior or highly cited authors.