Science of Success: Quantifying Performance and its Reception in Science

PLANARY SESSION

Tuesday 23rd of September

Abstract:

Our current approach to success is driven by the belief that predicting exceptional impact requires us to detect extraordinary ability. Despite the long-standing interest in the problem, even experts remain notoriously bad at predicting long-term impact. Success becomes suddenly predictable, however, if we see it not as an individual but a collective phenomenon: for something to be successful, it is not enough to be novel or appealing, but we all must agree that it is worthy of praise.  If we accept the collective nature of success, its signatures can be uncovered from the many pieces of data around us using the tools of network and data sciences. In this talk I will focus on success in science as a way to testing our ability to measure and predict success.  I will show that the future impact of research papers can be predicted by decoding the community’s early reaction to it. Moving to scientific careers, I ask if we can predict when will a scientists make her highest impact discovery and how to assign credit to collaborative work. The uncovered patterns point towards a general, quantitative theory of success and signal the emergence of a new research field, The Science of Success.