The effect of structural holes on producing novel and disruptive research in physics

As teams become prevalent in contemporary science, how to establish collaborations is key to tomorrow’s breakthrough, which has broad implications to individual scientists, institutions, and funding agencies. In this paper, we focus on the association between collaboration networks and scientists producing novel and disruptive research, based on the publication data from the American Physical Society. In particular, we focus on the role of spanning structural holes on producing novel and disruptive research. Our primary finding is that scientists whose collaboration networks span over structural holes in their collaboration networks not only produce more novel and disruptive research, but also have higher chance to produce novel and disruptive research. Although both male and female scientists benefit from structural holes, we find suggestive evidence that female researchers benefit more. This paper provides empirical evidence on the relationship between structural holes and novel/disruptive research in the field of physics, which has policy implications for nurturing scientists and developing science policies.