Symbolic Capital or Social Glue? Recognition in Collaborative High-Energy Physics Research

A trend towards more and larger research collaborations in the sciences raises questions about how individual scientists who work primarily in collaborations receive recognition. Experimental high-energy physics is known for exceptionally large research collaborations, with publications featuring thousands of authors in alphabetical order. Consequently, the question of how individual scientists receive recognition has been explicitly discussed in this discipline. In this article, I describe discussions and efforts to improve the recognition of individual researchers in the ATLAS collaboration at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), based on an analysis of documents and interviews with collaboration members of all career stages. I analyze these accounts by introducing a conceptual framework distinguishing between elementary and institutionalized recognition, and recognition as appreciation and admiration, respectively. I show that articulations of recognition are mobilized by the collaboration to reproduce the experiment and the community. Drawing on these observations, I argue for a broader concept of recognition in the social studies of science. Beyond the notion of recognition as symbolic capital for individuals, we should also consider the reproductive and stabilizing capacity of recognition for scientific communities. I also show how receiving community-oriented appreciation creates a dilemma for early-career researchers who desire admiration to compete in academic labor markets. The need to value a broader range of contributions in collaborative research therefore requires structural changes in academic career systems.