Large teams develop and small teams disrupt science and technology

Wu, Lingfei; Wang, Dashun; Evans, James A.

doi:10.1038/s41586-019-0941-9

Cited by 689 publications

(572 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Rather, we observed either stable or declining concept or subdiscipline diversity. While greater interdisciplinarity is often invoked as a requirement for transformative research (Ledford, 2015; National Academy of Sciences, 2004), impactful science rarely occurs as a result of "one size fits all" mandates (Gravem et al, 2017;Wu et al, 2019). While greater interdisciplinarity is often invoked as a requirement for transformative research (Ledford, 2015; National Academy of Sciences, 2004), impactful science rarely occurs as a result of "one size fits all" mandates (Gravem et al, 2017;Wu et al, 2019).…”

Section: Con Clus Ionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of interdisciplinarity in biodiversity science

Craven

Winter

Hotzel³

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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The study of biodiversity has grown exponentially in the last thirty years in response to demands for greater understanding of the function and importance of Earth's biodiversity and finding solutions to conserve it. Here, we test the hypothesis that biodiversity science has become more interdisciplinary over time. To do so, we analyze 97,945 peer‐reviewed articles over a twenty‐two‐year time period (1990–2012) with a continuous time dynamic model, which classifies articles into concepts (i.e., topics and ideas) based on word co‐occurrences. Using the model output, we then quantify different aspects of interdisciplinarity: concept diversity, that is, the diversity of topics and ideas across subdisciplines in biodiversity science, subdiscipline diversity, that is, the diversity of subdisciplines across concepts, and network structure, which captures interactions between concepts and subdisciplines. We found that, on average, concept and subdiscipline diversity in biodiversity science were either stable or declining, patterns which were driven by the persistence of rare concepts and subdisciplines and a decline in the diversity of common concepts and subdisciplines, respectively. Moreover, our results provide evidence that conceptual homogenization, that is, decreases in temporal β concept diversity, underlies the observed trends in interdisciplinarity. Together, our results reveal that biodiversity science is undergoing a dynamic phase as a scientific discipline that is consolidating around a core set of concepts. Our results suggest that progress toward addressing the biodiversity crisis via greater interdisciplinarity during the study period may have been slowed by extrinsic factors, such as the failure to invest in research spanning across concepts and disciplines. However, recent initiatives such as the Intergovernmental Science‐Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) may attract broader support for biodiversity‐related issues and hence interdisciplinary approaches to address scientific, political, and societal challenges in the coming years.

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Section: Con Clus Ionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of interdisciplinarity in biodiversity science

Craven

Winter

Hotzel³

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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“…We believe that it is thus especially important to preserve and even increase investment in bottom‐up “blue‐sky” funding schemes because, in our view, these strategies provide a funding mechanism that is more likely to be associated with high‐quality research and that could also provide substantial societal benefits via connections to relevant stakeholders. Indeed, this could be tested: a recent bibliometric study demonstrated that breakthrough‐type (“disruptive”) research has not typically been the type of research that had been funded by the US NSF (Wu, Wang, & Evans, ). It would be interesting to investigate whether, for example, the ERC as an entirely bottom‐up funding scheme does deliver this type of science.…”

Section: Topical Shaping Of Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, larger groups can also stifle creativity and tend towards conservatism (Geman & Geman, ), and may actually waste resources if scientifically unnecessary partners are included solely to fulfil funding criteria. The flexibility and freedom of choice and methods that characterize relatively small‐scale projects can produce surprising scientific outcomes that are not likely to be generated by consortia or other large groups (Wu et al., ). By this logic, we believe that maximizing scientific quality will include a balanced investment in both individual projects and group‐led efforts (see also Wu et al., ).…”

Section: Distributions Of Fundsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The flexibility and freedom of choice and methods that characterize relatively small‐scale projects can produce surprising scientific outcomes that are not likely to be generated by consortia or other large groups (Wu et al., ). By this logic, we believe that maximizing scientific quality will include a balanced investment in both individual projects and group‐led efforts (see also Wu et al., ).…”

Section: Distributions Of Fundsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Science policies: How should science funding be allocated? An evolutionary biologists’ perspective

Meirmans

Butlin

Charmantier

et al. 2019

J of Evolutionary Biology

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In an ideal world, funding agencies could identify the best scientists and projects and provide them with the resources to undertake these projects. Most scientists would agree that in practice, how funding for scientific research is allocated is far from ideal and likely compromises research quality. We, nine evolutionary biologists from different countries and career stages, provide a comparative summary of our impressions on funding strategies for evolutionary biology across eleven different funding agencies. We also assess whether and how funding effectiveness might be improved. We focused this assessment on 14 elements within four broad categories: (a) topical shaping of science, (b) distribution of funds, (c) application and review procedures, and (d) incentives for mobility and diversity. These comparisons revealed striking among‐country variation in those elements, including wide variation in funding rates, the effort and burden required for grant applications, and the extent of emphasis on societal relevance and individual mobility. We use these observations to provide constructive suggestions for the future and urge the need to further gather informed considerations from scientists on the effects of funding policies on science across countries and research fields.

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“…Then, we matched each paper published between 2008 and 2017 to the exact affiliations of the authors during W a and Wc , and 26,977 articles were successfully matched. This study follows Wu et al () in the definition for the disruptiveness d p of a certain paper:

d_{p} = \frac{i - j}{i + j + k},

where i is the number of citations given to the focal paper from papers that did not cite the references of the focal paper; j is the number of citations given to the focal paper from papers that cite at least one of the references of the focal paper; and k is the number of citations given to the reference(s) of the focal paper from papers that did not cite the focal paper. For a certain paper, if d p is positive, it is considered to be a disruptive study and, elsewise, a developing study (developing existing work).…”

Section: Data and Measurementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scientists' academic disruptiveness significantly increased after they moved to China

Zhao

Jiang

Min

et al. 2019

Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Tech

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This paper investigates the relationships between scientists' international mobility and their academic disruptiveness, by using data collected from the ORCID website and the Web of Science database (2008‐2017). Specifically, our observations contain 1,388 scholars who joined “brain gain” and “brain drain” and moved to China in the past decades. Results illustrate that scientists' disruptiveness significantly increased after they moved to China.

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Large teams develop and small teams disrupt science and technology

Cited by 689 publications

References 31 publications

Evolution of interdisciplinarity in biodiversity science

Evolution of interdisciplinarity in biodiversity science

Science policies: How should science funding be allocated? An evolutionary biologists’ perspective

Scientists' academic disruptiveness significantly increased after they moved to China

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