The impact of early debut on scientists: Evidence from the Young Scientists Fund of the NSFC

Early career funding is usually the first prestigious funding young scientists receive, allowing them to make their debut on a nationally recognised foundation. In this study, we examined the impact of an early debut on young scientists' research productivity. First-movers and late-comers are distinguished based on the years between the first application to the final award of early career funding. We then explored the variations between 3353 first-movers and 4650 late-comers of the Young Scientists Fund sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. We find that an early debut has a strong positive short-term effect on research productivity in terms of both quantity and quality, and the positive effect amplifies with the increasing time span of the final award between first-movers and late-comers. However, the strong positive effect on long-term productivity presents only in the three- and four-year early debuts. These results suggest that the productivity gains of young scientists with an early debut tend to decrease over time. The significant gap between first-movers and three-, and four-year late-comers in the long term demonstrates a time threshold which distinguishes scientists' long-term research productivity. In addition, we find that the research productivity gap can be explained by the expanding research network and increasing funding opportunities.