Behind an Accelerated Scientific Research Career: Dynamic Interplay of Endogenous and Exogenous Forces in Talent Development

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for your fine contributions, this is an excellent piece and I thoroughly enjoyed reading through.

This is a very timely and interesting study which could have an impact for careers in academia. I think it would be important to stress on how this study can bring a difference to others' lives.

It would also be important to have some suggestions for future studies in different contexts and cultures which would contribute to this interesting stream of work. 

Author Response

Thanks for the comments and suggestions, well taken. I will revise accordingly.

Reviewer 2 Report

The organization of the Method section makes it difficult to understand, as it does not follow the classic structure of Participants, Instrument, Procedure and Data Analysis.

The description of the participants highlights their eminence, but no intelligence measures have been taken

Endogenous Forces That Were Developmentally Instigative: 

It would be much more accurate to determine how many have the characteristic described, rather than the ambiguous "most"

Obviously the sample is composed of people who have demonstrated excellence both at the student level and later in their positions at the university. The results are not surprising. It would have been more interesting to have a comparable control group and determine the differences, given the small sample size

Author Response

Thanks for the cogent comments and suggestions. I will make the following changes based on your comments:

On the method section, I will order my description according to your suggestoins

On description of the participants, I will add a paragraph describing the admission procedures and criteria, which include an intelligence measure, among others.

On "endogenous forces" I will be more accurate in presenting data, stating the numbers of individuals rather than using "most"

On the potential of setting a comparative control group, it would not be possible to redo this part, but I have a previous study that did not target a selective group like this one did, but have 80% of a cohort of this early entrance program. I will provide an estimate of what proportion of this cohort went ahead to study abroad, and out of those who studied abroad, what proportion eventually ended taking academic jobs like this selected group did.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Although the results are adequately commented on, in my view it is still missing that one of the important limitations of the study is not having a control group to compare with, that is, people with high intelligence who do not achieve excellence. That is a central issue in gifted and excellence studies, and should be commented on, at least raised as future studies.

Author Response

In my revision, I compared this group with a broader cohort who passed the same intelligence threshold but only a small proportion of this group made that far. I will add a few sentences in the discussion to make the conjecture that having high IQ might be a necessary but not sufficient condition and likely other qualities such as personality and motivation becomes increasingly important for sustaining a level of effort necessary for the increasing higher levels of challenges ahead of them. I will make sure this is part of future directions for research.