Related papers: Knowledge Independence Breeds Disruption but Limit…
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…
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…
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…
Park et al. [1] reported a decline in the disruptiveness of scientific and technological knowledge over time. Their main finding is based on the computation of CD indices, a measure of disruption in citation networks [2], across almost 45…
The combination of diverse, pre-existing knowledge is a common explanation for scientific breakthroughs. However, a paradox exists: while scientific output and the potential for such recombination have grown exponentially, the rate of…
Measuring the rate of innovation in academia and industry is fundamental to monitoring the efficiency and competitiveness of the knowledge economy. To this end, a disruption index (CD) was recently developed and applied to publication and…
A growing literature has examined whether innovation is becoming less disruptive, spanning diverse domains and data sources and using a range of methodologies. This paper provides an inventory of 105 studies exploring this question. The…
As science transitions from the age of lone geniuses to an era of collaborative teams, the question of whether large teams can sustain the creativity of individuals and continue driving innovation has become increasingly important. Our…
A recent analysis of scientific publication and patent citation networks by Park et al. (Nature, 2023) suggests that publications and patents are becoming less disruptive over time. Here we show that the reported decrease in disruptiveness…
We examine the tension between academic impact - the volume of citations received by publications - and scientific disruption. Intuitively, one would expect disruptive scientific work to be rewarded by high volumes of citations and,…
Recent research on the decline in the paper disruption index (D-index) has sparked heated debates among scholars and garnered significant attention from policymakers and research institution leaders globally. To bridge the gap between…
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…
Science is built on the scholarly consensus that shifts with time. This raises the question of how new and revolutionary ideas are evaluated and become accepted into the canon of science. Using two recently proposed metrics, we identify…
The past few centuries have witnessed a dramatic growth in scientific and technological knowledge. However, the nature of that growth - whether exponential or otherwise - remains controversial, perhaps partly due to the lack of quantitative…
A recent highly-publicized study by Park et al. (Nature 613: 138-144, 2023), claiming that science has become less disruptive over recent decades, represents an extraordinary achievement but with deceptive results. The measure of…
The mechanisms driving different types of scientific innovation through collaboration remain poorly understood. Here we develop a comprehensive framework analyzing over 14 million papers across 19 disciplines from 1960 to 2020 to unpack how…
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…
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…
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,…
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…