PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Robinson-Garcia, Nicolas
AU  - Costas, Rodrigo
AU  - Sugimoto, Cassidy R.
AU  - Larivière, Vincent
AU  - Nane, Gabriela F.
TI  - Task specialization and its effects on research careers
AID  - 10.1101/2020.07.01.181669
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.07.01.181669
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/07/01/2020.07.01.181669.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/07/01/2020.07.01.181669.full
AB  - We model a set of 70,694 publications and 347,136 distinct authors using Bayesian networks to predict scientists’ specific contributions on each of their publications. We predict the contributions of 222,925 authors in 6,236,239 publications, and apply an archetypal analysis to profile scientists by career stage. We divide scientific careers into four stages: junior, early-career, mid-career and late-career. Three scientific archetypes are found throughout the four career stages: leader, specialized, and supporting. All three archetypes are encountered for the early- and mid-career stages, whereas for junior and late-career stages only two archetypes are found. Scientists assigned to the leader and specialized archetypes tend to have longer careers than researchers who belong to the supporting archetype. There is consistent gender bias at all stages: the majority of male scientists belong to the leader archetype, while the larger proportion of women belong to the specialized archetype, especially for early and mid-career researchers.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.