Big Egos in Big Science: Unlocking Peer and Status Effects in the evolution of collaborative networks

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 collaboration among groups of researchers, from a multitude of institutions and locations, having a diverse knowledge set and capable of tackling more and more complex problems. This prose the question if big egos continues to dominate in this rising paradigm of big science. Using a dataset consisting of full bibliometric coverage from a Large Scale Research Facility, we utilize a stochastic actor oriented model (SAOM) to analyze both network endogeneous and exogeneous mechanisms driving of collaboration network evolution. Our preliminary results suggest that the selection of collaborators still is skewed, and identify a large homophily effect creating not merely a rich-gets-richer effect but even an elitist rich-club with high entry barriers.