Mentorship effects on elite journal publishing vary by career stage
Mentorship resources and citation-elite journal publication trajectories after training: Evidence from bioscience mentor-mentee networks
Digital LibrariesSocial and Information Networks
Summary
This paper studies how mentorship during training and connections after training affect publishing in top bioscience journals. The authors find that publishing with strong mentors during training helps mentees start publishing in elite journals. However, continuing close collaborations with mentors or large peer groups after training can reduce how much mentees publish. Instead, keeping similar research topics and networks after training helps sustain high publishing rates over time. This suggests that early mentorship resources help launch a career, while ongoing network ties influence long-term success.
What this means in practice
- •For research lab managers: Design mentoring and collaboration strategies that recognize when to foster close mentor ties versus encouraging independent networks to sustain long-term publication success.
- •For academic career advisors: Advise early-career researchers on balancing collaboration during mentorship with developing diverse networks post-training to maximize publishing in high-impact journals.
Authors
Hao Zeng, Yi Bu, Qingshan Zhou, Hongkan Chen
Abstract
Mentorship provides mentees with knowledge, collaborators, and reputation, but when do these resources support scholarship beyond training? Using 239,931 bioscience mentor-mentee pairs from the Academic Family Tree (1800-2020) linked to OpenAlex metadata, we examine this question through mentees' publication in citation-elite journals, identified by three source-level citation indicators. We distinguish training-period mentor and peer resources from post-graduation topic and coauthorship network continuity. Analyses combine trajectory comparisons, three propensity-score matching designs, PPML, two-part model and non-overlapping landmarks relating continuity in post-graduation years 1-3 to publication outcomes in years 4-10 and 6-20. Citation-elite journal publishing during mentorship is positively associated with later publishing, but correlates differ by career stage. Close mentor collaboration and larger peer group size characterize training-period publishing, whereas both are negatively associated with post-graduation publication probability and intensity. Early topic and network continuity are positively associated with later output in landmark analyses; across extended conventional windows, topic continuity becomes less favorable, consistent with later agenda broadening. Network continuity shows the most stable positive association with publication intensity. The findings suggest a stage-dependent resource-conversion process: training resources may facilitate entry into citation-elite journal publishing, whereas sustained output is associated with how intellectual and relational ties are retained or reconfigured.