Increasing trend of scientists to switch between topics
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Published version
Date
2019-07-31
Authors
Zeng, An
Shen, Zhesi
Zhou, Jianlin
Fan, Ying
Di, Zengru
Wang, Yougui
Stanley, H. Eugene
Havlin, Shlomo
Version
Published version
OA Version
Citation
An Zeng, Zhesi Shen, Jianlin Zhou, Ying Fan, Zengru Di, Yougui Wang, H Eugene Stanley, Shlomo Havlin. 2019. "Increasing trend of scientists to switch between topics.." Nat Commun, Volume 10, Issue 1:3439. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11401-8
Abstract
Despite persistent efforts in understanding the creativity of scientists over different career stages, little is known about the underlying dynamics of research topic switching that drives innovation. Here, we analyze the publication records of individual scientists, aiming to quantify their topic switching dynamics and its influence. We find that the co-citing network of papers of a scientist exhibits a clear community structure where each major community represents a research topic. Our analysis suggests that scientists have a narrow distribution of number of topics. However, researchers nowadays switch more frequently between topics than those in the early days. We also find that high switching probability in early career is associated with low overall productivity, yet with high overall productivity in latter career. Interestingly, the average citation per paper, however, is in all career stages negatively correlated with the switching probability. We propose a model that can explain the main observed features.
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License
© The Author(s) 2019. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.