Should Young Computer Scientists Stop Collaborating with their Doctoral Advisors?

TL;DR

This study investigates post-PhD collaboration patterns between computer scientists and their advisors, revealing that greater independence correlates with higher academic success and longer careers, with some nuances based on advisor success.

Contribution

It classifies post-graduation collaboration behaviors into three groups and links these patterns to academic success and career longevity, providing new insights into advisor-advisee dynamics.

Findings

Highly independent researchers are more successful academically.

Moderately independent researchers tend to perform better than weakly independent.

Weakly independent researchers often have more successful advisors.

Abstract

One of the first steps in an academic career, and perhaps the pillar thereof, is completing a PhD under the supervision of a doctoral advisor. While prior work has examined the advisor-advisee relationship and its potential effects on the prospective academic success of the advisee, very little is known on the possibly continued relationship after the advisee has graduated. We harnessed three genealogical and scientometric datasets to identify 3 distinct groups of computer scientists: Highly independent, who cease collaborating with their advisors (almost) instantly upon graduation; Moderately independent, who (quickly) reduce the collaboration rate over ~5 years; and Weakly independent who continue collaborating with their advisors for at least 10 years post-graduation. We find that highly independent researchers are more academically successful than their peers in terms of H-index, i10-index and total number of citations throughout their careers. Moderately independent researchers perform, on average, better than weakly independent researchers, yet the differences are not found to be statistically significant. In addition, both highly and moderately independent researchers are found to have longer academic careers. Interestingly, weakly independent researchers tend to be supervised by more academically successful advisors.