Published in Scientometrics, 2023 and Applied Network Science, 2022.
Scientific careers are shaped not only by individual productivity but also by the structure of collaboration and citation networks. This line of research examines how network position influences career impact, and whether these effects differ by gender.
In one study, we investigate whether collaborating early in one’s career with a super-cited author provides a medium-term boost to a junior researcher’s impact. Using a matching model based on co-authorship network measurements in economics, we compare junior collaborators with similar non-collaborators. We find a significant positive effect on impact for all junior collaborators, but no statistically significant difference between men and women — suggesting that the benefits of high-profile collaboration are gender-neutral in the medium term.
In a complementary study focused on the Mexican National System of Researchers (SNI), we analyze the relationship between the structure of citation networks and scientific impact. Specifically, we examine highly intercited papers in the k-core of citation networks. We find that a more interconnected citation core (higher k-max) is positively correlated with impact, even after controlling for SNI level, area of expertise, and number of publications. However, women tend to have less interlinked citation cores than men and a higher share of third-party citations, while men exhibit more self- and collaborator-citations. A Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition reveals that much of the citation gender gap can be explained by differences in observable network characteristics.