Li, Mingtang;
Livan, Giacomo;
Righi, Simone;
(2025)
Quantifying the dynamics of peak disruption in scientific careers.
Scientific Reports
, 15
(1)
, Article 10812. 10.1038/s41598-025-95264-8.
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Abstract
We examine the disruption of researchers with long-lived careers in Computer Science and Physics. Despite the epistemological differences between such disciplines, we consistently find that a researcher's most disruptive publication does not occur at random during their career, as it cannot be explained by a null model. Such publication is accompanied by a peak year in which researchers publish other work that exhibits a higher level of disruption than average. Through a series of linear models, we show that the disruption achieved by a researcher during their peak year is higher when it is preceded by a long period of focus and low productivity. These findings are in stark contrast with the dynamics of academic impact. In these dynamics, researchers are incentivized by the prevalent paradigms of scientific evaluation to pursue high productivity and incremental-less disruptive-work, as evidenced by extensive literature.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Quantifying the dynamics of peak disruption in scientific careers |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41598-025-95264-8 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-95264-8 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Academic impact, Disruptive innovation, Scientific careers, Scientific disruption |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10206920 |
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