Standing on the shoulders of giants

•The study analyzes the impact of collaboration with well-known researchers of a field, on the career and success of new researchers.•We studied the effect of collaboration with an elite researcher on career of new researcher in start of career and in later part of the career.•We analyzed the performance of new researchers who never collaborated with a top class researcher.•The researchers who started without any support of a well-known researcher and collaborated with them later were among the most successful ones.

Young scholars in academia often seek to work in collaboration with top researchers in their field in pursuit of a successful career. While success in academia can be defined differently, everyone agrees that training with a well-known researcher can help lead to an efficacious career. This study aims to investigate whether collaborating with established scientists does, in fact, improve junior scholars' chances of success. If not, what makes young scientists soar in their academic careers? We investigate this question by analyzing the effect of collaboration with a known-star on success of a young scholar. The results suggest that working with leading experts can lead to a successful career, but that it is not the only way. Researchers who were not fortunate enough to start their career with an elite researcher could still succeed through hard work and passion. These findings emerged from analyses of two discrete sets of well-known scholars on the career of newcomers, suggesting their strength and validity.