Choosing a career partner: birds of a feather flock together

Within close scientific collaborations, partners trust and support each other. Super-partnerships emerge among scholars who are interconnected within tightly knit collaborative networks. Understanding the characteristics of super-partnerships is crucial for comprehending patterns of super-relationships and partner selection. In this paper, we introduce a new concept that defines a collaborative partner with a super tie as a “career partner”. This study focuses on career partnerships within the field of economics, employing a relationship-centered Exponential Random Graph Model (ERGM) to identify the characteristics of career partners. A total of 3724 pairs of career partners were identified in economics. Several noteworthy findings regarding the characteristics of career partnerships are summarized as follows: (1) in terms of research level, career partners exhibit higher research productivity and longer careers, and scholars with a “similar standing” are more likely to become career partners than those with a “disparity in status”; (2) in terms of gender, “same-gender attraction” is more likely to foster strong relationships than “opposite-gender attraction”; (3) in terms of research topics, academics are more inclined to form super-connections with career partners who share “like-mindedness”; (4) in terms of geographical proximity, scholars who are “inseparable as body and shadow” are more likely to become career partners than those who are “far apart”. Our findings suggest that academics are more likely to form career partnerships with partners who share similar characteristics. This paper explores the attributes of career partners and provides a new reference for researchers in selecting academic partners.