Related papers: Serendipity in Science
There has been tremendous growth in the amount of scientific literature being published every year. Yet, very little of it receives press coverage. Mentions by news outlets often establish the relevance the research has to society in…
Despite the growing importance of teams in producing innovative and high-impact science and technology, it remains unclear how expertise diversity among team members relates to the originality and impact of the work they produce. Here, we…
Scientists are frequently faced with the important decision to start or terminate a creative partnership. This process can be influenced by strategic motivations, as early career researchers are pursuers, whereas senior researchers are…
Data makes science possible. Sharing data improves visibility, and makes the research process transparent. This increases trust in the work, and allows for independent reproduction of results. However, a large proportion of data from…
The impact and originality are two critical dimensions for evaluating scientific publications, measured by citation and disruption metrics respectively. Despite the extensive effort made to understand the statistical properties and…
This article argues that the most important significance of the AI revolution, especially the rise of large language models, lies not simply in automation, but in a fundamental change in how complex information and human know-how are…
The century of complexity has come. The face of science has changed. Surprisingly, when we start asking about the essence of these changes and then critically analyse the answers, the result are mostly discouraging. Most of the answers are…
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…
Whether a scientific paper is cited is related not only to the influence of its author(s) but also to the journal publishing it. Scientists, either proficient or tender, usually submit their most important work to prestigious journals which…
A suite of impressive scientific discoveries have been driven by recent advances in artificial intelligence. These almost all result from training flexible algorithms to solve difficult optimization problems specified in advance by teams of…
In recent years, funding agencies and journals increasingly advocate for open science practices (e.g. data and method sharing) to improve the transparency, access, and reproducibility of science. However, quantifying these practices at…
The number of citations is a widely used metric to evaluate the scientific credit of papers, scientists and journals. However, it does happen that a paper with fewer citations from prestigious scientists is of higher influence than papers…
An increased interdisciplinarity in science projects has been highlighted as crucial to tackle complex real-world challenges, but also as beneficial for the development of disciplines themselves. This paper introduces a parcimonious…
Numerous studies have revealed biases within the scientific communication system and across all scientific fields. For example, already prominent researchers receive disproportional credit compared to their (almost) equally qualified…
Policies ensuring that research data are available on public archives are increasingly being implemented at the government [1], funding agency [2-4], and journal [5,6] level. These policies are predicated on the idea that authors are poor…
Scientific novelty drives advances at the research frontier, yet it is also associated with heightened uncertainty and potential resistance from incumbent paradigms, leading to complex patterns of scientific impact. Prior studies have…
Academic and scientific publishing practices have changed significantly in recent years. This paper presents an analysis of 17 million research papers published since 2000 to explore changes in authorship and content practices. It shows a…
Artificial intelligence (AI) has seen fast paced development in industry and academia. However, striking recent advances by industry have stunned the field, inviting a fresh perspective on the role of academic research on this progress.…
Contemporary scholarly discourse follows many alternative routes in addition to the three-century old tradition of publication in peer-reviewed journals. The field of High- Energy Physics (HEP) has explored alternative communication…
Scientists in some fields are concerned that many, or even most, published results are false. A high rate of false positives might arise accidentally, from shoddy research practices. Or it might be the inevitable result of institutional…