As the Paris Olympics captured the world's attention, it proved apparent that winning medals often hinged on the success of teamwork. While such an approach clearly works in sports, new research suggests teamwork is not always the desired method … especially for young scientists trying to find an academic job.

"We found that if your team size in your discipline is large, your prospects for an academic career go down," said Donna Ginther, the Roy A. Roberts Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of Kansas.

Her paper titled "The rise of teamwork and career prospects in academic science" reveals individuals who finish their doctorate in situations where the average team in their field is larger have worse career options. The results demonstrate that academic science has not adjusted its reward structure (which is largely individual) in response to team science. It appears in Nature Biotechnology.

"The number of authors on papers in our discipline has changed," she said. "In econ, when I graduated, there were single-author papers. Now it's often three to five—so it's essentially doubled. In science fields in particular, it's grown a lot. And when the National Institutes of Health budget doubled, papers increased by about one author."

Co-written with Mabel Andalón, Catherine de Fontenay and Kwanghui Lim of the University of Melbourne, this research combined data on career outcomes from the Survey of Doctorate Recipients with publication data that measured research size from ISI Web of Science.

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