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‘Disruptive’ science has declined — and no one knows why

The proportion of publications that send a field in a new direction has plummeted over the past half-century.
By
  1. Max Kozlov

The number of science and technology research papers published has skyrocketed over the past few decades — but the ‘disruptiveness’ of those papers has dropped, according to an analysis of how radically papers depart from the previous literature1.

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Nature 613, 225 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-04577-5

References

  1. Park, M., Leahey, E. & Funk, R. J. Nature 613, 138–144 (2023).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Cowen, T. & Southwood, B. Preprint at SSRN http://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3822691 (2019).

  3. Wu, L., Wang, D. & Evans, J. A. Nature 566, 378–382 (2019).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

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