The golden cage of science: first-last author prestige gap buys impact over disruption

Abstract

First and last authors make critical but distinct contributions in the majority of scientific papers. First authors tend to conduct research and analysis, whereas last authors are usually responsible for setting research directions and providing resources and supervision. The first-last author prestige gap (FL gap, $ΔH$) is defined as the H-index difference between the last and first authors prior to the focal paper's publication. The FL gap serves as a measure of the prestige asymmetry between the two dominant collaborators. We find that larger FL gaps in either direction are associated with higher impact and lower disruption. This trade-off is robust across team sizes and intensities of prior collaboration and can not be explained by first and last authors' separate prestige effects or their academic age gap. Further analysis shows that variation in last author prestige is associated with larger differences in both the article's impact and disruption than variation in first author prestige. We refer to this coexistence of higher impact and lower disruption related to the FL gap as the ``golden cage of science'', which reflects a common collaboration structure that statistically produces highly cited but less disruptive work. These findings suggest the first-last author prestige gap as an important indicator for examining how research teams balance senior guidance with exploratory autonomy.