Hong Chen

hongcc [at] umich.edu

105 S State St

Ann Arbor, MI 48105

I am a PhD student in School of Information at University of Michigan. I am fortunate to be advised by Misha Teplitskiy and David Jurgens.

I study science of science and innovation and have a broad interest in computational social science. My current research investigates global disparities in science and knowledge transfer within the science community. I adopt an interdisciplinary approach and use methods from NLP, network science, and causal inference in my research.

Previously, I received my Master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University and my Bachelor’s degree from Zhejiang University. After a circuitous journey, like solving a non-convex optimization problem, I unlock the thrill of computational social science. Now when I’m not playing with data, you can find me blazing the kitchen, searching for misplaced goggles, or honing my barista skills for a backup career plan.

See my CV for papers and links.

news

Jul 02, 2024	Our paper titled “Geographical Disparities in Navigating Rejection in Science Drive Disparities in its File Drawer” is covered by Nature News.
Jun 30, 2024	I will be attending ICSSI 2024 in Washington D.C. and present my paper about resilience of collaboration network.
Jul 18, 2023	Our paper at the Social Influence in Conversations Workshop won Best Paper!!

selected publications

Geographical disparities in navigating rejection in science drive disparities in its file drawer

Hong Chen, Christopher I Rider, David Jurgens, and 1 more author

Available at SSRN, 2024

Abs HTML

Science progresses when contributions are publicized, usually in journals, for others to build upon, but the typical manuscript is rejected. We consider how differential responses to manuscript rejection generate differential representation in not only published knowledge but also the "file drawer" of unpublished research. Analyzing 126K manuscripts rejected by 62 STEM journals published by the Institute of Physics Publishing, we document several new empirical facts. Conditioning on manuscript quality (as proxied by peer review recommendations) and when compared to authors at institutions in non-Western countries, Western-country authors are 5.7% more likely to publish a manuscript after rejection; publish 23 days faster; revise 5.9% less; change co-authors 12.0% less; and ultimately publish in journals with 0.8% higher impact factors. Although exploratory surveys of rejected authors are inconclusive, our empirical analyses implicate geographic differences in access to procedural knowledge - how to interpret feedback, revise a manuscript, and resubmit elsewhere. Post-rejection outcomes are better when corresponding authors are likely to have better access to procedural knowledge, such as prior publishing experience and Western co-authors. Overall, these results imply that the file-drawer of unpublished research contains a disproportionate amount of ideas from non-Western countries, in part because of differences in procedural knowledge.