‘Disruptive’ science has declined — and no one knows why

NEWS
04 January 2023

The proportion of publications that send a field in a new direction has plummeted over the past half-century.

The number of science and technology research papers published has skyrocketed over the past few decades — but the ‘disruptiveness’ of those papers has dropped, according to an analysis of how radically papers depart from the previous literature¹.

Nature 613, 225 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-04577-5

References

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