Li, Mingtang;
Livan, Giacomo;
Righi, Simone;
(2023)
Quantifying the dynamics of peak innovation in scientific careers.
arXiv.org: Ithaca (NY), USA.
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Abstract
We examine the innovation 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 innovative publication occurs earlier than expected if innovation were distributed at random across the sequence of publications in their career, and is accompanied by a peak year in which researchers publish other work which is more innovative than average. Through a series of linear models, we show that the innovation achieved by a researcher during their peak year is higher when it is preceded by a long period of low productivity. These findings are in stark contrast with the dynamics of academic impact, which researchers are incentivised to pursue through high productivity and incremental - less innovative - work by the currently prevalent paradigms of scientific evaluation.
| Type: | Working / discussion paper |
|---|---|
| Title: | Quantifying the dynamics of peak innovation in scientific careers |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2301.06374 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10181688 |
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