Fig. 4. Authorship structure and hot streaks in science.

a The average team size around the beginning of a hot streak for real and randomized careers in science. Team size shows a significant drop before a hot streak begins, but a notable increase during hot streak. b We calculate team size for papers published before and during hot streak, and compare the distribution to that of randomized careers for 500 realizations, denoted as R(team size). R decreases with team size from above to below 1 for papers published before a hot streak but increases with team size for papers published during a hot streak. Both measures in (a) and (b) suggest that scientists tend to engage with smaller teams before hot streak, and with larger teams during the hot streak. Error bars represent the standard error of the mean.