Empowering the Next Generation: The Role of Team Hierarchy in Retaining Junior Researchers

Early-career scientists are essential to driving scientific progress, yet nearly half leave academia after their first publication. While factors like team size, gender, mentorship, and institutional prestige are known to affect retention, the influence of team hierarchy on junior researchers’ career paths remains underexplored. This study investigates how hierarchical structures within research teams impact the retention of junior scientists, using Microsoft Academic Graph data from over 30 million teams across 19 disciplines. We define retention as a combination of paper publishing (continue publishing), academic independence (continue publishing without depending on the same senior authors), and career progression (change institution). Team hierarchy is measured through the Gini coefficient of career age for all team members. We reveal that flat team structures support the retention of junior researchers with a career age of 5 years or less, especially in social science and small teams. These findings remain robust when accounting for diverse individual- and team-based variables and are consistent across different disciplines. Our findings provide insights that can inform team composition, ultimately contributing to more sustainable academic careers for early-career scientists.