Facets of Specialization and Its Relation to Career Success: An Analysis of U.S. Sociology, 1980 to 2015

Abstract

We investigate how sociology students garner recognition from niche field audiences through specialization. Our dataset comprises over 80,000 sociology-related dissertations completed at U.S. universities, as well as data on graduates’ pursuant publications. We analyze different facets of how students specialize—topic choice, focus, novelty, and consistency. To measure specialization types within a consistent methodological frame, we utilize structural topic modeling. These measures capture specialization strategies used at an early career stage. We connect them to a crucial long-term outcome in academia: becoming an advisor. Event-history models reveal that specific topic choices and novel combinations exhibit a positive influence, whereas focused theses make no substantial difference. In particular, theses related to the cultural turn, methods, or race are tied to academic careers that lead to mentorship. Thematic consistency of students’ publication track also has a strong positive effect on the chances of becoming an advisor. Yet, there are diminishing returns to consistency for highly productive scholars, adding important nuance to the well-known imperative of publish or perish in academic careers.

Benefits and detriments of interdisciplinarity on early career scientists’ performance. An author-level approach for U.S. physicists and psychologists

“…At least for early career physicists and psychologists, addressing novel lines of research pays off quickly enough when looking at their whole (early) work, even though it might still be risky for individual papers. The requirements for ECRs to develop an independent research identity and to contribute novel insights to the scholarly discourse as part of their PhD and postdoctoral studies might be more important than the drawbacks, which is also supported by recent results for young researchers in the sociological field [ 6 ].…”

“…On a final note: should ECRs pursue novel or interdisciplinary lines of research following our results? Our findings imply that ECRs should pursue a limited number of research topics and make one their main line of research [ 6 ]. In addition, ECRs should avoid trying to integrate intellectually disparate research topics.…”

“…Being highly productive and publishing many papers is a well-established factor for the success of academic careers [ 1 – 5 ]. Although recent research reveals that a consistent publication record moderates the “publish or perish” imperative [ 6 ], the pressure to publish is especially high for early career researchers, who yet have to leave a mark on the scientific discourse, and secure a position in a highly competitive job market [ 7 – 9 ]. We ask if it is beneficial for early career researchers to specialize in a research branch covered by a lot of other scholars or if they should pursue a novel line of research, which might yield high returns at later points in time.…”

“…To investigate research strategies like pursuing novel or interdisciplinary lines of research from a career perspective is complicated though. This is especially true in the early career phase, when researchers develop their personal research agenda [ 6 , 10 ]. These difficulties may be the reason why previous studies focused mainly on articles to investigate how novelty and interdisciplinary research (IDR) affect research impact.…”

“…In the years following a PhD, ECRs who seek to remain in academia are faced with the task of making their mark in the highly competitive arena of academia. To achieve this, they must 1) develop a research identity suitable for a specific field of research [ 6 , 23 , 24 ], 2) find their own research agenda and become an independent researcher [ 25 – 27 ], and 3) contribute genuinely new insights to the academic community [ 6 , 28 ]. In other words, if they conduct interdisciplinary and novel research, which might be highly risky research strategies in themselves, they have to do so in the most vulnerable phase of their academic career.…”