Related papers: Quantifying the Ease of Scientific Discovery
As the increasing complexity of large-scale research requires the combined efforts of scientists with expertise in different fields, the advantages and costs of interdisciplinary scholarship have taken center stage in current debates on…
The emergence of cosmic structure is commonly considered one of the most complex phenomena in Nature. However, this complexity has never been defined nor measured in a quantitative and objective way. In this work we propose a method to…
Science progresses by building upon previous discoveries. It is commonly believed that the impact of scientific papers, as measured by citations, is positively correlated with the impact of past discoveries built upon. However, analyzing…
Scientific progress is inherently sequential: collective knowledge is updated as new studies enter the literature. We propose the sequential meta-analysis research trace (SMART), which quantifies the influence of each study at the time it…
It appears paradoxical that science is producing outstanding new results and theories at a rapid rate at the same time that researchers are identifying serious problems in the practice of science that cause many reports to be irreproducible…
A qualitatively new, much more liberal and efficient organisation of science is proposed and justified, in connection with growing debate about further role and development of fundamental science. Although the key ideas can be explained…
This two-part review examines how automation has contributed to different aspects of discovery in the chemical sciences. In this second part, we reflect on a selection of exemplary studies. It is increasingly important to articulate what…
Selection is central to biological evolution, yet there has been no general experimental framework for quantifying selection in chemical systems before life. Here we demonstrate that selection in a prebiological chemical system can be…
While the modern science is characterized by an exponential growth in scientific literature, the increase in publication volume clearly does not reflect the expansion of the cognitive boundaries of science. Nevertheless, most of the metrics…
We define a novel quantitative strategy inspired by the ecological notion of nestedness to single out the scale at which innovation complexity emerges from the aggregation of specialized building blocks. Our analysis not only suggests that…
We are facing a real challenge when coping with the continuous acceleration of scientific production and the increasingly changing nature of science. In this article, we extend the classical framework of co-word analysis to the study of…
In research policy, effective measures that lead to improvements in the generation of knowledge must be based on reliable methods of research assessment, but for many countries and institutions this is not the case. Publication and citation…
Scientific research's mandate is to comprehend and explore the world, as well as to improve it based on experience and knowledge. Knowledge embedding and knowledge discovery are two significant methods of integrating knowledge and data.…
Quantifying success in science plays a key role in guiding funding allocations, recruitment decisions, and rewards. Recently, a significant amount of progresses have been made towards quantifying success in science. This lack of detailed…
The pursuit of knowledge is the permanent goal of human beings. Scientific literature, as the major medium that carries knowledge between scientists, exhibits explosive growth during the last century. Despite the frequent use of many…
Nature's many varied complex systems (including galaxies, stars, planets, life, and society) are islands of order within the increasingly disordered universe. All organized systems are subject to physical, biological or cultural evolution,…
The exponentially growing number of scientific papers stimulates a discussion on the interplay between quantity and quality in science. In particular, one may wonder which publication strategy may offer more chances of success: publishing…
The expectation that scientific productivity follows regular patterns over a career underpins many scholarly evaluations. However, recent studies of individual productivity patterns reveal a puzzle: the average number of papers published…
Scientific information expresses human understanding of nature. This knowledge is largely disseminated in different forms of text, including scientific papers, news articles, and discourse among people on social media. While important for…
Human creativity is the ultimate driving force behind scientific progress. While the building blocks of innovations are often embodied in existing knowledge, it is creativity that blends seemingly disparate ideas. Existing studies have made…