Path of excellence: A co-authorship network analysis of European Research Council grant winners in social sciences

The international scientific community puts an ever-growing emphasis on research excellence and performance evaluation. So does the European Union with its flagship research excellence grant scheme organised by the European Research Council. This paper aims to provide an in-depth analysis of one of the ERC's thematic panels within the social sciences, namely the SH2 "Political Science" panel. The analysis is based on empirical, statistical methods, and network analysis tools to gain insights about the grant winners' publication patterns and their coauthor networks. The results draw up an academic career track of the grantees based on quantitative publication patterns and performance. Besides, a change in authorship can be observed, which is proven by the formation of new groups and intensifying intra-group collaboration patterns in the case of all three grant types. However, the ERC grant serves different functions for the winners of three different categories: for the Starting Grant winners, it offers the possibility to kick off and establish their research group, for the Consolidator Grant winners, it opens up new opportunities to extend their co-authorship network, and for the Advanced Grant winners, it offers the chance to start a new collaboration.