Is the research community rotten

I got my bachelor and master degree from a fairly small and unknown university (in Europe) close to my city. While working on my master thesis, I wrote up my work and submitted it to the top conference in my field and the paper got in. (The field I'm in is quite different from many other field in that the top conferences have a much higher reputation then the top journals). I always worked quite hard and I come from a family that wasn't really educated. So me getting that paper in really felt as if research would perfectly fit me, since I observed as if it was a community where it didn't matter who you are or where you are coming from, you are valued based on the quality of your work. So after my master studies I immediately got an offer from my university to do a phd there. At the time, I didn't know exactly how good I was and I thought I made no chance at another university or I just didn't know what the benefit would be of applying there (Here in Europe ranking of university is not such a big thing as in the US). So I just accepted the offer and started my phd.

Now almost 4 years later at the end of my phd, I submitted 6 more papers to the top conference in the field and every one of them got in immediately. Besides this, a lot of my papers had lots of press attention. Many people in our group are more focused on quantity so they also collaborate with a people from other universities who have the same mind set. For some reason, I'm not so interested in this approach and I'm a real quality freak and therefore do almost everything myself. But my advisors are quite happy with me since having this many papers at that conference was unseen before. They just let me do my own thing and trust that my desire for quality will result in great work.

So I'm near the end of my phd. I still really enjoy research but I'm doubting if the whole research community is giving everyone an equal chance. It seems as if it is governed by a group of great researchers from top universities who don't want to get involved with other smaller universities and it almost seems as if they blame me for being at a university that is less known. Let me try to give some examples. Since I attended and presented at some conferences (where I presented my 6 papers), I start to know people and they start to know me and we briefly talk but it seems as if it stops there. They congratulate me with the great presentation and work and next year they publish something very similar but do not refer to my work. Somehow they get away with it (probably because their papers are indeed very good and a paper will not be rejected because of 1 missing reference of a research group, the reviewers are maybe not even aware). So as a result, my papers do not get a lot of citations. I do get some requests to review papers for decent conferences but I still get all the crappy papers that are "easy rejects". Normally you get these kind of papers when you start reviewing just to get some experience but I think I’m ready to review more interesting papers for quite a while now. In contrast, I see phd students from top universities working with well-known researchers who are on exactly the same track as me (similar number of papers at same conference) and their papers get a huge amount of citations, they are invited to visit other research labs, are already involved as organizers in these conferences,... This is probably just because more people know there well known advisor, visit their website more often and spot the new work with their phd students. Since many of these people have the same age and are interested in the same stuff as me, we talk fairly often and they are almost friends. When I talk to more senior people at conferences, oftentimes, they start to ask which university I'm from and who I work with. Then they react quite strange when I answer, it gets awkward and we stop talking. It is also quite unfortunate that I only can go to conferences where I have a paper accepted. I think it would be great for my network to also attend some smaller conferences. Since I never published smaller papers that involved less work, I only attended a hand full of big conferences. Other phd students I know who publish at the same conferences get the chance to also attend these smaller conferences without having a paper there. So now I'm near the end of my phd and despite the papers that I have my h-index is quite low, my network not so big and my recommendation letters probably do not have same value as the once from other universities. I feel that I didn't get as many opportunities as other researchers with the same qualifications despite that that my results are quite unusual without having these big names on my papers. Too me it seems as if I pay a big price for not being at a top university whereas I always thought that in science only the quality of your results mattered. I really enjoy doing research and I will probably find some position somewhere but if the community is really like this maybe I don't want to be a part of it anymore.

I feel quite depressed about this since I thought this was my future for many years.