Identification of successful mentoring communities using network-based analysis of mentor–mentee relationships across Nobel laureates

Skills underlying scientific innovation and discovery generally develop within an academic community, often beginning with a graduate mentor’s laboratory. In this paper, a network analysis of doctoral student-dissertation advisor relationships in The Academic Family Tree indicates the pattern of Nobel laureate mentoring relationships is non-random. Nobel laureates had a greater number of Nobel laureate ancestors, descendants, mentees/grandmentees, and local academic family, supporting the notion that assortative processes occur in the selection of mentors and mentees. Subnetworks composed entirely of Nobel laureates extended across as many as four generations. Several successful mentoring communities in high-level science were identified, as measured by number of Nobel laureates within the community. These communities centered on Cambridge University in the latter nineteenth century and Columbia University in the early twentieth century. The current practice of building web-based academic networks, extended to include a wider variety of measures of academic success, would allow for the identification of modern successful scientific communities and should be promoted. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11192-017-2364-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.