Nobel laureates: Their publication productivity, collaboration and authorship status

Abstract

This paper attempts to highlight the scientific productivity, productivity age, collaboration trend, domains of contributions of eight Nobel laureates of past and present belonging to different domains of research in science. Also attempts to document the various factors that affect productivity of scientists. No Nobel laureates can be compared with other Nobel laureates as they are an altogether different class of scientific elites and each piece of research is unique by itself.

World literature on thorium research: A scientometric study based on Science Citation Index

“…Research is becoming more and more collaborative in recent years when compared to earlier years as all the governments are giving a lot of impetus to research and development activities. 18 Scientometrics 69 (2006) International collaboration…”

What is research?

“…Many of the important discoveries or breakthroughs in science have arisen from intuition, serendipity, inspiration, luck, as well as from intense observation and the motivations that researchers receive as they develop their careers (Kademani et al, 2005). Luck and serendipity was certainly true for Alexander Fleming when he discovered Penicillin in 1928.…”

Do Nobel laureates change their patterns of collaboration following prize reception?

“…In addition to Zuckerman's (1996) detailed analysis, several other studies focus on Nobel laureates, taking into account such factors as age or career path and productivity (Jones and Weinberg 2011, Kademani et al 2005, van Dalen 1999, Stephan and Levin 1993, intuition (Marton et al 1994), recognition across the career (Chan, Gleeson and Torgler 2014), speed of post-prize recognition (Chan and Torgler 2013), the consequences of educational background and methodological orientation , age premium (Baffes and Vamvakidis 2011), case study analysis of collaboration structure (Kademani et al 2005), collaboration productivity , family background (Rothenberg 2005), professional ability (Shavinina 2004), predictability of the Nobel Prize (Gingras and Wallace 2010) and knowledge spillover (Ham and Weinberg 2011). In general, the exploration of Nobelists offers several advantages similar to those of a controlled (experimental) environment in that all prize winners have been affected by the same abrupt upward mobility shock and all are researchers with very high intellectual human capital and are thus relatively homogeneous in their collaboration "attractiveness".…”