Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time
Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time
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DOI：
10.1038/s41586-022-05543-x
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发表时间：
2023-01-05
期刊：
影响因子：
64.8
通讯作者：
Funk, Russell J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Park, Michael;Leahey, Erin;Funk, Russell J.
科学和技术变革理论将发现和发明视为内生过程（1，2），其中先前积累的知识通过允许研究人员（用牛顿的话说）“站在巨人的肩膀上”（3-7）来实现未来的进步。近几十年来，新科学技术知识的数量呈指数级增长，从而为重大进展创造了成熟的条件（8，9）。然而，与这种观点相反，研究表明，在几个主要领域的进展正在放缓（10，11）。在这里，我们分析了60年来的大规模索赔，使用来自六个大规模数据集的4500万篇论文和390万项专利的数据，以及一个新的定量指标-CD指数（12）-描述论文和专利如何改变科学和技术引用网络。我们发现，论文和专利越来越不可能以推动科学和技术走向新方向的方式与过去决裂。这种模式在各个领域都普遍适用，并且在多个不同的基于引用和文本的指标中具有鲁棒性（1，13 -17）。随后，我们将这种破坏性的下降与以前知识的使用范围缩小联系起来，使我们能够将我们观察到的模式与“巨人的肩膀”观点相协调。我们发现，所观察到的下降不太可能是由已发表科学的质量，引用实践或特定领域因素的变化所驱动的。总的来说，我们的研究结果表明，中断速度的放缓可能反映了科学和技术性质的根本转变。
Theories of scientific and technological change view discovery and invention as endogenous processes(1,2), wherein previous accumulated knowledge enables future progress by allowing researchers to, in Newton's words, 'stand on the shoulders of giants'(3-7). Recent decades have witnessed exponential growth in the volume of new scientific and technological knowledge, thereby creating conditions that should be ripe for major advances(8,9). Yet contrary to this view, studies suggest that progress is slowing in several major fields(10,11). Here, we analyse these claims at scale across six decades, using data on 45 million papers and 3.9 million patents from six large-scale datasets, together with a new quantitative metric-the CD index(12)-that characterizes how papers and patents change networks of citations in science and technology. We find that papers and patents are increasingly less likely to break with the past in ways that push science and technology in new directions. This pattern holds universally across fields and is robust across multiple different citation- and text-based metrics(1,13-17). Subsequently, we link this decline in disruptiveness to a narrowing in the use of previous knowledge, allowing us to reconcile the patterns we observe with the 'shoulders of giants' view. We find that the observed declines are unlikely to be driven by changes in the quality of published science, citation practices or field-specific factors. Overall, our results suggest that slowing rates of disruption may reflect a fundamental shift in the nature of science and technology.