Overall performance
I take a look at results and you can demographic features toward a few categories of PIs, finding that prior to procedures, he is statistically identical along the proportions i measured (Fig. 1b). Yet the cures composed a clear difference in both, wherein one to category try issued R01 has, and this an average of amount to $step 1.3 million for 5 ages, due to the fact other group was not.
Upcoming profession impact
We therefore traced the publication records of PIs from the two groups. We first focus on active PIs in the NIH system, defined as those who apply for and/or receive NIH grants at some point in the future (Fig. 1c and ‘Different definitions of active PIs’ in Supplementary Note 3). We calculated the publication rates of the PIs, finding that the two groups published a similar number of papers per person over the next ten-year period (Fig. 2a), consistent with prior studies 8,15,52 . We then computed, out of the papers published by the near-miss and narrow-win group, the probability of finding hit papers (Fig. 2b), defined as being in the top 5% of citations received in the same year and field (as indicated by the Web of Science subject category) 34,37 . In the first five years, 13.3% of papers published by the narrow-win group turned out to be a hit paper, which is substantially higher than the baseline hit rate of 5%, demonstrating that narrow wins considered in our sample produced hit papers at a much higher rate than average scientists in their field. We measured the same probability for the near-miss group, finding that they produced hit papers at an average rate of 16.1%paring the two groups, we find near misses outperformed narrow wins significantly, by a factor of 21% (? 2 -test p-value < 0.001, odds ratio = 1.25). This performance advantage persisted: We analyzed papers produced in the second five-year window (6–10 years after treatment), uncovering a similar gap (Fig. 2b, ? 2 -test p-value < 0.001, odds ratio = 1.19). To ensure the observed effect is not just limited to hit papers, we also quantified performance using other commonly used measures, including average citations received within five years of publication (Fig. 2c) and the relative citation ratio (RCR) of each paper (see ‘Normalized citations over time and disciplines' in Supplementary Note 3) 53,54 , arriving at the same conclusions. Indeed, papers published by the near-miss group in the next two five-year periods attracted on average 19.4% (32.3 for near misses and 27.0 for narrow wins, t-test p-value < 0.001, Cohen's d = 0.08) and 12.0% more citations (32.3 for near misses and 28.8 for narrow wins, t-test p-value < 0.001, Cohen's d = 0.06) than those by the narrow-win group, respectively (Fig. 2c).
Comparing future career outcome between near misses (orange) and narrow wins (blue). a The average number of publications per person. b Near misses outperformed narrow wins in terms of the probability of producing hit papers in the next 1–5 years, 6–10 years, and 1–10 years. Note that there appears a slight performance improvement for the narrow-win group in the second five-year period, but the difference is not statistically significant (? daten met jackd 2 -test p-value > 0.1, odds ratio = 1.05). c Average citations within 5 years of publication. The near-miss applicants again outperformed their narrow-win counterparts. To ensure all papers have at least 5 years to collect citations, here we used data from 1990 to 2000 to avoid any boundary effect. d Funding difference between the near-miss and narrow-win group from the NIH (near misses minus narrow wins). ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.1; Error bars represent the standard error of the mean