Related papers: Quantifying the rise and fall of scientific fields
Many of the essential features of the evolution of scientific research are imprinted in the structure of citation networks. Connections in these networks imply information about the transfer of knowledge among papers, or in other words,…
Scholarly communications have been rapidly integrated into digitised and networked open ecosystems, where preprint servers have played a pivotal role in accelerating the knowledge transfer processes. However, quantitative evidence is scarce…
Understanding the qualitative patterns of research endeavor of scientific authors in terms of publication count and their impact (citation) is important in order to quantify success trajectories. Here, we examine the career profile of…
A common expectation is that career productivity peaks rather early and then gradually declines with seniority. But whether this holds true is still an open question. Here we investigate the productivity trajectories of almost 8,500…
Understanding the fundamental concepts and trends in a scientific field is crucial for keeping abreast of its continuous advancement. In this study, we propose a systematic framework for analyzing the evolution of research topics in a…
The growing need for affordable and accessible higher education is a major global challenge for the 21st century. Consequently, there is a need to develop a deeper understanding of the functionality and taxonomy of universities and colleges…
Disagreement is essential to scientific progress. However, the extent of disagreement in science, its evolution over time, and the fields in which it happens, remains poorly understood. Leveraging a massive collection of English-language…
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…
Progress in science has advanced the development of human society across history, with dramatic revolutions shaped by information theory, genetic cloning, and artificial intelligence, among the many scientific achievements produced in the…
A scientist may publish tens or hundreds of papers over a career, but these contributions are not evenly spaced in time. Sixty years of studies on career productivity patterns in a variety of fields suggest an intuitive and universal…
Evolution has fascinated quantitative and physical scientists for decades: how can the random process of mutation, recombination, and duplication of genetic information generate the diversity of life? What determines the rate of evolution?…
We report characteristics of in-text citations in over five million full text articles from two large databases - the PubMed Central Open Access subset and Elsevier journals - as functions of time, textual progression, and scientific field.…
The selection of research topics by scientists can be viewed as an exploration process conducted by individuals with cognitive limitations traversing a complex cognitive landscape influenced by both individual and social factors. While…
Understanding how institutional changes within academia may affect the overall potential of science requires a better quantitative representation of how careers evolve over time. Since knowledge spillovers, cumulative advantage,…
Scientific discovery is shaped by scientists' choices and thus by their career patterns. The increasing knowledge required to work at the frontier of science makes it harder for an individual to embark on unexplored paths. Yet…
Over the past decades, the diversity of areas explored by physicists has exploded, encompassing new topics from biophysics and chemical physics to network science. However, it is unclear how these new subfields emerged from the traditional…
Gender inequality in scientific careers has been extensively documented through aggregate measures such as total publications and cumulative citations, yet the temporal dynamics underlying these disparities remain largely unexplored. Here…
Scientific and technological frontiers advance through punctuated dynamics, yet the principles governing these dynamics remain poorly understood. Here we collect and analyze datasets tracking the evolution of frontiers across 9 different…
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…
The field of Computer science (CS) has rapidly evolved over the past few decades, providing computational tools and methodologies to various fields and forming new interdisciplinary communities. This growth in CS has significantly impacted…