It is important to explore how scientists decide their research agenda and the corresponding consequences, as their decisions collectively shape contemporary science. There are studies focusing on the overall performance of individuals with different problem choosing strategies. Here we ask a slightly different but relatively unexplored question: how is a scientist's change of research agenda associated with her change of scientific performance. Using publication records of over 14,000 authors in physics, we quantitatively measure the extent of research direction change and the performance change of individuals. We identify a strong positive correlation between the direction change and impact change. Scientists with a larger direction change not only are more likely to produce works with increased scientific impact compared to their past ones, but also have a higher growth rate of scientific impact. On the other hand, the direction change is not associated with productivity change. Those who stay in familiar topics do not publish faster than those who venture out and establish themselves in a new field. The gauge of research direction in this work is uncorrelated with the diversity of research agenda and the switching probability among topics, capturing the evolution of individual careers from a new point of view. Though the finding is inevitably affected by the survival bias, it sheds light on a range of problems in the career development of individual scientists.
翻译:重要的是要探索科学家如何决定其研究议程和相应的后果,因为他们的决定共同决定了当代科学。有些研究侧重于有不同问题的个人的总体业绩选择战略。我们在这里提出一个略为不同但相对未探索的问题:科学家改变研究议程与她改变科学业绩有何关系。我们利用物理领域超过14 000名作者的出版记录,从数量上衡量研究方向变化和个人业绩变化的程度。我们确定方向变化与影响变化之间的强烈正相关关系。具有较大方向变化的科学家不仅更有可能产生与过去相比科学影响更大的工作,而且具有较高的科学影响增长率。另一方面,方向变化与生产力变化无关。那些停留在熟悉的专题上的人发表的速度并不快于那些冒险出局并在新领域建立自己地位的人。这项工作的研究方向的衡量与研究议程的多样性和不同专题之间的转换概率不相关,从新的角度了解个人职业生涯的演变情况。虽然研究结果不可避免地受到生存偏向的影响,但它揭示了个人职业生涯发展的一系列问题。