Cumulative advantage of brokerage in physics

Abstract

Science is a collaborative endeavor in which “who collaborates with whom” profoundly shapes academic success. However, the way in which scientists facilitate new collaborations among their peers—a well-studied process called brokerage—has received little attention in the context of academic careers. Here, we quantify brokerage in physics and examine its relationship with academic success in over 130,000 careers spanning a century. Early engagement in brokerage predicts more brokerage events in subsequent career stages, revealing its cumulative nature. More successful scientists engage in brokerage more frequently and at increasing rates across comparable career stages. These results hold when controlling for career entry decade and brokerage roles. While brokerage-success correlations apply to women and men, the cumulative advantage intensifies at senior levels where women remain underrepresented owing to later entry into physics and higher dropout rates. Thus, the cumulative nature of brokerage intertwines with gender disparities and the unequal distribution of success in physics.