2016
Success in Science

About the work

Success is not about you, it’s about us. That’s the thesis of Barabási’s 2019 book The Formula, which explores the role community plays in embracing a high-performance individual and aiding her success. The book, built on years of previous research in the lab, reconstructed the professional careers of thousands of artists and scientists in the course of distilling the five universal laws of success.

Team

Success in Science, by K. Albrecht, A.-L. Barabási, P. Deville, M. Martino, R. Sinatra, C. Song, and D. Wang, created for “Quantifying the Evolution of Individual Scientific Impact,” Science (November 4, 2016).

For one line of research, the BarabásiLab relied on data drawn from the massive record of all scientific publications published since 1900 to identify the quantitative patterns that drive individual success in science. During the course of the study, the team developed multiple tools and visualizations to capture the evolution of a scientific career and explore the conditions necessary for the emergence of a high-impact discovery. The resulting visualizations show the careers of hundreds of scientists, depicting their patterns of creativity over time. Each line corresponds to the publishing career of a single scientist.

Deviations from the line capture the impact of each work within a scientist’s career. Large deviations correspond to the coveted, high-impact career-defining publications. Some of the excessively wavy lines highlight the few scientists who have changed the course of science. The images illustrate not only the exceptional disparity of impact, but also just how rare career-defining breakthroughs actually are.

In this visualization of Success in Science by Kim Albrecht, each of the concentric circles represents one scientist's publications. Deviations in the line—the bumps and peaks—indicate high-impact career-defining publications. 
This visualization of Success in Science by Mauro Martino shows the career-defining moments of scientists' work in perspective, with the scientists whose publications have had the biggest impact on the field clustered as a small group at the top. 
In this visualization of Success in Science by Mauro Martino, each line represents one scientist's careers. Deviations in the line—the bumps and peaks—indicate high-impact career-defining publications. 
In this visualization of Success in Science by Kim Albrecht, each line represents one scientist's careers. Deviations in the line—the bumps and peaks—indicate high-impact career-defining publications. 
In this visualization of Success in Science by Kim Albrecht, each line represents one scientist's careers. Deviations in the line—the bumps and peaks—indicate high-impact career-defining publications. 
In this visualization of Success in Science by Mauro Martino, each line represents one scientist's careers. Deviations in the line—the bumps and peaks—indicate high-impact career-defining publications. 

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