2019/04/12 by Alberto Aleta, Aleta, Alberto, Sandro Meloni +5
Computer Science · Decision Sciences · #Data Analysis with R #Digital Libraries (cs.DL) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph) #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #scientometrics and bibliometrics research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1904.06306
openalex publication_date 2019/04/12 · openalex created_date 2022/07/29 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In the book The Essential Tension Thomas Kuhn described the conflict between\ntradition and innovation in scientific research --i.e., the desire to explore\nnew promising areas, counterposed to the need to capitalize on the work done in\nthe past. While it is true that along their careers many scientists probably\nfelt this tension, only few works have tried to quantify it. Here, we address\nthis question by analyzing a large-scale dataset, containing all the papers\npublished by the American Physical Society (APS) in more than 25 years, which\nallows for a better understanding of scientists' careers evolution in Physics.\nWe employ the Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme (PACS) present in\neach paper to map the scientific interests of 181,397 authors and their\nevolution along the years. Our results indeed confirm the existence of the\n`essential tension' with scientists balancing between exploring the boundaries\nof their area and exploiting previous work. In particular, we found that\nalthough the majority of physicists change the topics of their research, they\nstay within the same broader area thus exploring with caution new scientific\nendeavors. Furthermore, we quantify the flows of authors moving between\ndifferent subfields and pinpoint which areas are more likely to attract or\ndonate researchers to the other ones. Overall, our results depict a very\ndistinctive portrait of the evolution of research interests in Physics and can\nhelp in designing specific policies for the future.\n