Page 55 - Science

RESEARCH

◥ theimpactofteamresearch,findingthatsmallteams
REVIEW SUMMARY tend to disrupt science and technology with new
ideas drawing on older and less prevalent ones. In
contrast,largeteamstendtodeveloprecent,popular
SCIENCE COMMUNITY
ideas, obtaining high, but often short-lived, impact.
Science of science OUTLOOK: SciSci offers a deep quantitative
understanding of the relational structure between
scientists, institutions, and ideas because it facil-
Santo Fortunato,* Carl T. Bergstrom, Katy Börner, James A. Evans, Dirk Helbing, itates the identification of fundamental mecha-
Staša Milojević, Alexander M. Petersen, Filippo Radicchi, Roberta Sinatra, Brian Uzzi, nisms responsible for scientific discovery. These
Alessandro Vespignani, Ludo Waltman, Dashun Wang, Albert-László Barabási* interdisciplinary data-driven efforts complement
contributions from related fields such as sciento-
BACKGROUND: The increasing availability of ADVANCES: Science can be described as a com- metrics and the economics and sociology of
digital data onscholarly inputs and outputs—from plex, self-organizing, and evolving network of science. Although SciSci
◥
research funding, productivity, and collaboration scholars, projects, papers, and ideas. This rep- ON OUR WEBSITE seekslong-standinguniver-
to paper citations and scientist mobility—offers resentation has unveiled patterns characterizing sal laws and mechanisms
Read the full article
unprecedentedopportunitiestoexplorethestruc- the emergence of new scientific fields through at http://dx.doi. that apply across various
ture and evolution of science. The science of the study of collaboration networks and the path org/10.1126/ fields of science, a funda-
science(SciSci)offersaquantitativeunderstanding of impactful discoveries through the study of science.aao0185 mental challenge going
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of the interactions among scientific agents across citationnetworks.Microscopicmodels havetraced forward is accounting for
diverse geographic and temporal scales: It provides the dynamics of citation accumulation, allowing undeniable differences in culture, habits, and
insights into the conditions underlying creativity us to predict the future impact of individual preferences between different fields and coun-
and the genesis of scientific discovery, with the papers. SciSci has revealed choices and trade-offs tries. This variation makes some cross-domain Downloaded from
ultimate goal of developing tools and policies that scientists face as they advance both their own insights difficult to appreciate and associated
that have the potential to accelerate science. In careers and the scientific horizon. For example, mea- sciencepoliciesdifficulttoimplement.Thediffer-
the past decade, SciSci has benefited from an in- surements indicate that scholars are risk-averse, encesamongthequestions,data,andskillsspecif-
flux of natural, computational, and social scien- preferring to study topics related to their current ic to each discipline suggest that further insights
tists who together have developed big data–based expertise, which constrains the potential of future canbegainedfromdomain-specificSciScistudies,
capabilities for empirical analysis and generative discoveries. Those willing to break this pattern whichmodel and identify opportunities adapted
modeling that capture the unfolding of science, engage in riskier careers but become more likely to to the needs of individual research fields. ▪
its institutions, and its workforce. The value prop- make major breakthroughs. Overall, the highest- http://science.sciencemag.org/
osition of SciSci is that with a deeper understand- impact science is grounded in conventional combi- The list of author affiliations is available in the full article online.
ing of the factors that drive successful science, we nations of prior work but features unusual *Corresponding author. Email: santo@indiana.edu (S.F.);
barabasi@gmail.com (A.-L.B.)
can more effectively address environmental, soci- combinations. Last, as the locus of research is Cite this article as S. Fortunato et al., Science 359,eaao0185
etal, and technological problems. shiftingintoteams,SciSciisincreasinglyfocusedon (2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aao0185

on March 1, 2018

The complexity of science. Science
can be seen as an expanding and
ILLUSTRATION: NICOLE SAMAY and papers. SciSci searches for
evolving network of ideas, scholars,
universal and domain-specific laws
underlying the structure and dynamics
of science.

Fortunato et al., Science 359, 1007 (2018) 2 March 2018 1of 1