Relationship between early-career collaboration among researchers and future funding success in Japanese academia

Academia is becoming more and more competitive, especially for young scientists, so it is important to understand the factors that affect success in academic careers. To survive in academia, it is crucial to obtain research funding. Previous studies have investigated factors that affect the funding success of researchers. In this paper, we focus on research collaboration structure as a factor affecting funding success. More specifically, we investigate the effects of participation in joint research projects, number of joint research projects, and centrality in the collaborative network on the future funding success of junior researchers in Japan. Our results show that participation in joint research projects and the number of such projects significantly affect the future funding success of junior researchers. Furthermore, the median number of years of funding received by researchers involved in joint research projects was found to be about 1.5 times greater than that of researchers not involved in joint research projects, and the average amount of research funding received after 10 years is about 2–4 times more, suggesting that researchers with collaboration ties with other researchers in the early stages of their career tend to be more successful in the future.