producing a large number of papers is inversely related to the square of the
number of producers (Price, 1986: 38, 223); hence the number of scientists
who produce a very large number of papers in vanishingly small. Derek Price
(1986: 140) estimates that the degree of stratification is the same in all scientific
fields, and has been of the same order since the takeoff of science at the time
of the inception of the British Royal Society in the 1660s.
The shape of the community is a sharply narrowing pyramid: if we look
at the population of scientists, the pyramid sits on a wide base of modest
producers; if we look at the population of papers produced by those individu-
als, it is a pyramid with its nose pushed into the ground and its base to the
sky. Of those who publish anything at all, the biggest group (75 percent)
produce just one or two papers, adding up to 25 percent of all papers publish-
ed. About one twentieth of the group publish half of all papers; they produce
10 or more papers per lifetime. The top two scientists out of 165 (1.2 percent)
produce 50 or more papers, and thus produce one quarter of all the papers.
Authors in a particular field are divided into those who are continuously
active (continuants) and those who are active only a short time (transients)
(Price, 1986: 206–226). The transients are represented by only a quarter of the
papers at any given time, but since they are coming and going every year, the
floating population of transients makes up 75–80 percent of the total popula-
tion of scientists. The “normal continuants” who publish fairly often for a
while are 60 percent of the active population in any given year, but about 20
percent of the total floating population. And the core group of high producers
who publish every year are 1–2 percent of the total floating population.
The levels of stratification among scientists are thus as follows:
scientific stars (small absolute numbers)
inner core—top producers (1–2 percent of total floating population)
outer core (20 percent of floating population)
transients—a few publications or one-shot producers (75–80 percent of
floating population)
audience and would-be recruits (10 to 100 size of floating population)Career levels in the scientific world depend on passing a series of barriers: (1)
one’s first publication, which admits one into the scientific community as
distinguished from laypersons (frequently this is the Ph.D. research); (2) one’s
next few publications, which put one in the intermediate group of transients
or potential continuants; (3) five years of continuing publication, which puts
one in the high-producing elite or core. Total productivity depends mainly on
how long one stays active in research. Members of this core group (which
makes up 20 percent of those who are active at any one time, but only 1–2
Coalitions in the Mind • 43