Early career researchers are much more likely to see their work cited if their PhD supervisors are well-known academics, according to a major study?that suggests scholarly success is increasingly dependent on the status of one¡¯s mentor.

In a paper published in the Royal Society journal??on 14 August, researchers survey the ¡°academic genealogy¡± of more than 300,000 academics?who published nearly 10 million papers to work out if the PhD graduates of highly cited authors are more widely cited than those whose mentors had a lower academic reputation ¨C a phenomenon?that has often been attributed to the ¡°chaperone effect¡±.

A positive correlation ¨C which the paper labelled the ¡°academic Great Gatsby Curve¡± in reference to the term used in social sciences to describe the persistence of intergenerational income inequality ¨C was observed in nearly all 22 disciplines analysed but was strongest in philosophy, mathematics and linguistics.

Political science, computing and anthropology also have high levels of ¡°impact inequality¡±, states the paper, with the ¡°most egalitarian citation distribution¡± found in experimental psychology, microbiology and evolutionary biology.

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The ¡°impact persistence¡± between PhD mentors and mentees was slightly higher if the supervisor was female, the researchers note, suggesting?that this is ¡°possibly owing to female mentors having a lasting positive impact on mentees or providing career development facilitation to a larger extent than male mentors¡±.

On the growing importance of having a well-known ¡°academic parent¡±, the study suggests that ¡°academia has become less open and more stratified over time, as newer prot¨¦g¨¦ cohorts are characterised by lower intergenerational mobility than their predecessors¡±.

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While the paper, which examines whether the citations gained by scholars in the five years after their PhD aligned with the citation profile of supervisors, accepts that ¡°more successful mentors may have the privilege of being more selective in their choice of mentees, and vice versa, leading to a positive correlation between their impact¡±, it also argues that PhD students of well-known scholars are able to benefit from more networking opportunities.

¡°The transfer of academic status is instead grounded upon the inheritance of intangibles such as knowledge and visibility,¡± it says.

Given how ¡°academic impact ¨C as quantified by citations ¨C is to some extent inherited¡±, the authors advise that ¡°citation-based bibliometric indicators should be handled with care when used to assess the performance of academics¡±.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com