  Teams are the fundamental units propelling innovation and advancing modern
science. A rich literature links the fundamental features of teams, such as
their size and diversity, to academic success. However, such analyses fail to
capture temporal patterns, treating each group of co-authors as a distinct unit
and neglecting the existence of persistent collaborations. By contrast, teams
are dynamical entities, made of core members who consistently work together,
surrounded by transient members who sporadically participate. Leveraging on a
large dataset of over 205 million scientific papers published since 1900, we
extract 511,550 core teams of statistically significant persistent
collaborations of pairs and larger groups of scientists. We look into `team
careers' investigating their trajectories in time, characterizing their
formation, productivity and eventual dissolution. We characterize team
composition along multiple dimensions, including age, academic affiliation and
scientific disciplines. Finally, we investigate the academic impact of
persistent collaborations, hallmarking the key compositional features
underlying their success. Our work sheds light on the nature of persistent
teams, informing researchers, institutions and funding agencies about the
dynamics of their formation, evolution and success.
