Big Egos in Big Science

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the micro-mechanisms governing the structural evolution of a scientific collaboration. Empirical evidence indicates that we have transcended into a new paradigm with a new modus operandi where scientific discovery are not lead by so called lone ?stars?, or big egos, but instead by a group of people, from a multitude of institutions, having a diverse knowledge set and capable of operating more and more complex instrumentation Using a dataset consisting of full bibliometric coverage from a Large Scale Research Facility, we utilize a stochastic actor oriented model to estimate both the structural and performance effects of selection, as well as the behavioral of crossing organizational boundaries. Preliminary results suggest that the selection of collaborators still is skewed, and identify a large assortativity effect, as well as a tendency to interact with both authors with similar citations