Related papers: Adaptability and the Pivot Penalty in Science and …
Scientific innovation often comes from researchers who pivot across disciplines. However, prior work found that established researchers face productivity penalties when pivoting. Here, we investigate the consequences of pivoting at the…
The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly impacted people globally, yet its effect on scientists and research institutions has yet to be fully examined. To address this knowledge gap, we use a newly available bibliographic dataset covering tens of…
Persistence is often regarded as a virtue in science. In this paper, however, we challenge this conventional view by highlighting its contextual nature, particularly how persistence can become a liability during periods of paradigm shift.…
Geopolitical tensions increasingly reshape the structure and openness of global science, yet we still lack a clear understanding of how successfully scientists adapt their work under such pressures. Using millions of funding and publication…
The past half-century has seen a dramatic increase in the scale and complexity of scientific research, to which researchers have responded by dedicating more time to education and training, narrowing their areas of specialization, and…
Science prizes purportedly reward innovation and explorations of new phenomena. Yet, in practice prizes may inadvertently divert resources from similarly impactful but less celebrated scholars. Despite this paradox, knowledge of how…
This paper outlines a framework for the study of innovation that treats discoveries as additions to evolving networks. As inventions enter they expand or limit the reach of the ideas they build on by influencing how successive discoveries…
Theories of scientific and technological change view discovery and invention as endogenous processes, wherein prior accumulated knowledge enables future progress by allowing researchers to, in Newton's words, "stand on the shoulders of…
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…
Despite persistent efforts to understand the dynamics of creativity of scientists over careers in terms of productivity, impact, and prize, little is known about the dynamics of scientists' disruptive efforts that affect individual academic…
This paper studies the impact of artificial intelligence on innovation, exploiting the randomized introduction of a new materials discovery technology to 1,018 scientists in the R&D lab of a large U.S. firm. AI-assisted researchers discover…
We examine the innovation of researchers with long-lived careers in Computer Science and Physics. Despite the epistemological differences between such disciplines, we consistently find that a researcher's most innovative publication occurs…
Despite broad acclaim for basic research, science is undergoing an applied shift that marginalizes basic scientists. This gap reflects an incomplete understanding of their distinctive roles, which prevents translating philosophical…
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,…
It is important to explore how scientists decide their research agenda and the corresponding consequences, as their decisions collectively shape contemporary science. There are studies focusing on the overall performance of individuals with…
New ideas are often thought to arise from recombining existing knowledge. Yet despite rapid publication growth - and expanding opportunities for recombination - scientific breakthroughs remain rare. This gap between productivity and…
Fast-growing scientific publications present challenges to the scientific community. In this paper, we describe their implications to researchers. As references form explicit foundations for researchers to conduct a study, we investigate…
We analyze the publication records of individual scientists, aiming to quantify the topic switching dynamics of scientists and its influence. For each scientist, the relations among her publications are characterized via shared references.…
Citation metrics are becoming pervasive in the quantitative evaluation of scholars, journals and institutions. More then ever before, hiring, promotion, and funding decisions rely on a variety of impact metrics that cannot disentangle…
Progress in science and technology is punctuated by disruptive innovation and breakthroughs. Researchers have characterized these disruptions to explore the factors that spark such innovations and to assess their long-term trends. However,…