Studying the embeddedness of researchers' careers: Can bibliometric methods help?

Investigations of researchers' careers continue to be shaped by three frames of general career research, namely the neglect of the content of work, a narrow conceptualisation of career success, and a focus on isolated individual careers. The sociology of science and bibliometrics know different. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that individual-level structural bibliometrics can help us understand the dialectics of ECRs becoming independent while being embedded in knowledge-producing communities and collaborative networks. The paper demonstrates that becoming independent entails a recombination of knowledge acquired in the phase of dependent research (which means keeping cognitive links to one's previous work environments) and its application to new problems (which means establishing an independent research trail). These processes are field-specific.