The size of scientific fields may impede the rise of new ideas: Fundamental progress may be stymied if quantitative growth of scientific endeavors—in number of scientists, institutes, & papers—is not balanced by focusing attention on novel ideas

Slowed canonical progress in large fields of science. Johan S. G. Chu and James A. Evans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, October 12, 2021 118 (41) e2021636118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2021636118

Significance: The size of scientific fields may impede the rise of new ideas. Examining 1.8 billion citations among 90 million papers across 241 subjects, we find a deluge of papers does not lead to turnover of central ideas in a field, but rather to ossification of canon. Scholars in fields where many papers are published annually face difficulty getting published, read, and cited unless their work references already widely cited articles. New papers containing potentially important contributions cannot garner field-wide attention through gradual processes of diffusion. These findings suggest fundamental progress may be stymied if quantitative growth of scientific endeavors—in number of scientists, institutes, and papers—is not balanced by structures fostering disruptive scholarship and focusing attention on novel ideas.

Abstract: In many academic fields, the number of papers published each year has increased significantly over time. Policy measures aim to increase the quantity of scientists, research funding, and scientific output, which is measured by the number of papers produced. These quantitative metrics determine the career trajectories of scholars and evaluations of academic departments, institutions, and nations. Whether and how these increases in the numbers of scientists and papers translate into advances in knowledge is unclear, however. Here, we first lay out a theoretical argument for why too many papers published each year in a field can lead to stagnation rather than advance. The deluge of new papers may deprive reviewers and readers the cognitive slack required to fully recognize and understand novel ideas. Competition among many new ideas may prevent the gradual accumulation of focused attention on a promising new idea. Then, we show data supporting the predictions of this theory. When the number of papers published per year in a scientific field grows large, citations flow disproportionately to already well-cited papers; the list of most-cited papers ossifies; new papers are unlikely to ever become highly cited, and when they do, it is not through a gradual, cumulative process of attention gathering; and newly published papers become unlikely to disrupt existing work. These findings suggest that the progress of large scientific fields may be slowed, trapped in existing canon. Policy measures shifting how scientific work is produced, disseminated, consumed, and rewarded may be called for to push fields into new, more fertile areas of study.

Keywords: scientific progressdurable dominanceentrepreneurial futilityscience policyscience of science

Discussion

These findings suggest troubling implications for the current direction of science. If too many papers are published in short order, new ideas cannot be carefully considered against old, and processes of cumulative advantage cannot work to select valuable innovations. The more-is-better, quantity metric-driven nature of today’s scientific enterprise may ironically retard fundamental progress in the largest scientific fields. Proliferation of journals and the blurring of journal hierarchies due to online article-level access can exacerbate this problem.

Reducing quantity may be impossible. Proscribing the number of annual publications, shuttering journals, closing research institutions, and reducing the number of scientists are hard-to-swallow policy prescriptions. Even if a scientist wholeheartedly agreed with the implications of our study, curtailing their output would be impractical given the damage to their career prospects and those of their colleagues and students, for example. Limiting article quantity without altering other incentives risks deterring the publication of novel, important new ideas in favor of low-risk, canon-centric work.

Still, some changes in how scholarship is conducted, disseminated, consumed, and rewarded may help accelerate fundamental progress in large fields of science. A clearer hierarchy of journals with the most-prestigious, highly attended outlets devoting pages to less canonically rooted work could foster disruptive scholarship and focus attention on novel ideas. Reward and promotion systems, especially at the most prestigious institutions, that eschew quantity measures and value fewer, deeper, more novel contributions could reduce the deluge of papers competing for a field’s attention while inspiring less canon-centric, more innovative work. A widely adopted measure of novelty vis a vis the canon could provide a helpful guide for evaluations of papers, grant applications, and scholars. Revamped graduate training could push future researchers to better appreciate the uncomfortable novelty of ideas less rooted in established canon. These measures, while not easy to implement across large fields, may help push scholarship off the local attractor of existing canon and toward more novel frontiers.

The current study is at the level of fields and large subfields, and one could argue that progress now occurs at lower subdisciplinary levels. To examine lower levels at scale requires more precise methods for classifying papers—perhaps using temporal citation network community detection—than are currently available. But note that the fields and subfields identified in the Web of Science correspond closely to real-world self-classifications of journals and departments. Established scholars transmit their cognitive view of the world to their students via field-centric reading lists, syllabi, and course sequences, and field boundaries are enforced through career-shaping patterns of promotion and reward.

It may be that progress still occurs, even though the most-cited articles remain constant. While the most-cited article in molecular biology (22) was published in 1976 and has been the most-cited article every year since 1982, one would be hard pressed to say that the field has been stagnant, for example. But recent evidence (23) suggests that much more research effort and money are now required to produce similar scientific gains—productivity is declining precipitously. Could we be missing fertile new paradigms because we are locked into overworked areas of study?