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The role of mainstreamness and interdisciplinarity for the relevance of scientific papers

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  • Stefan Thurner
  • Wenyuan Liu
  • Peter Klimek
  • Siew Ann Cheong

Abstract

Is it possible to tell how interdisciplinary and out-of-the-box scientific papers are, or which papers are mainstream? Here we use the bibliographic coupling network, derived from all physics papers that were published in the Physical Review journals in the past century, to try to identify them as mainstream, out-of-the-box, or interdisciplinary. We show that the network clusters into scientific fields. The position of individual papers with respect to these clusters allows us to estimate their degree of mainstreamness or interdisciplinarity. We show that over the past decades the fraction of mainstream papers increases, the fraction of out-of-the-box decreases, and the fraction of interdisciplinary papers remains constant. Studying the rewards of papers, we find that in terms of absolute citations, both, mainstream and interdisciplinary papers are rewarded. In the long run, mainstream papers perform less than interdisciplinary ones in terms of citation rates. We conclude that to avoid a unilateral trend towards mainstreamness a new incentive scheme is necessary.

Suggested Citation

  • Stefan Thurner & Wenyuan Liu & Peter Klimek & Siew Ann Cheong, 2020. "The role of mainstreamness and interdisciplinarity for the relevance of scientific papers," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(4), pages 1-14, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0230325
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0230325
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. M. M. Kessler, 1963. "Bibliographic coupling between scientific papers," American Documentation, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 14(1), pages 10-25, January.
    2. Peter Klimek & Aleksandar Jovanovic & Rainer Egloff & Reto Schneider, 2016. "Successful fish go with the flow: citation impact prediction based on centrality measures for term–document networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 107(3), pages 1265-1282, June.
    3. Alessandro Pluchino & Giulio Burgio & Andrea Rapisarda & Alessio Emanuele Biondo & Alfredo Pulvirenti & Alfredo Ferro & Toni Giorgino, 2019. "Exploring the role of interdisciplinarity in physics: Success, talent and luck," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(6), pages 1-15, June.
    4. Sandström, Ulf & Van den Besselaar, Peter, 2018. "Funding, evaluation, and the performance of national research systems," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 365-384.
    5. S. Thurner & R. Hanel, 2011. "Peer-review in a world with rational scientists: Toward selection of the average," The European Physical Journal B: Condensed Matter and Complex Systems, Springer;EDP Sciences, vol. 84(4), pages 707-711, December.
    6. Wenyuan Liu & Andrea Nanetti & Siew Ann Cheong, 2017. "Knowledge evolution in physics research: An analysis of bibliographic coupling networks," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(9), pages 1-19, September.
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    Cited by:

    1. Julia Heuritsch, 2023. "The Evaluation Gap in Astronomy—Explained through a Rational Choice Framework," Publications, MDPI, vol. 11(2), pages 1-26, June.

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