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RESEARCH ◥ the impact of team research, finding that small teams REVIEW SUMMARY tend to disrupt science and technology with new ideas drawing on older and less prevalent ones. In contrast, large teams tend to develop recent, popular SCIENCE COMMUNITY ideas, obtaining high, but often short-lived, impact. Science of science OUTLOOK: SciSci offers a deep quantitative understanding of the relational structure between scientists, institutions, and ideas because it facil- Santo Fortunato,* Carl T. Bergstrom, Katy Börner, James A. Evans, Dirk Helbing, itates the identification of fundamental mecha- Staša Milojević, Alexander M. Petersen, Filippo Radicchi, Roberta Sinatra, Brian Uzzi, nisms responsible for scientific discovery. These Alessandro Vespignani, Ludo Waltman, Dashun Wang, Albert-László Barabási* interdisciplinary data-driven efforts complement contributions from related fields such as sciento- BACKGROUND: The increasing availability of ADVANCES: Science can be described as a com- metrics and the economics and sociology of digital data on scholarly inputs and outputs—from plex, self-organizing, and evolving network of science. Although SciSci ◥ research funding, productivity, and collaboration scholars, projects, papers, and ideas. This rep- ON OUR WEBSITE seeks long-standing univer- to paper citations and scientist mobility—offers resentation has unveiled patterns characterizing Read the full article sal laws and mechanisms unprecedented opportunities to explore the struc- the emergence of new scientific fields through at http://dx.doi. that apply across various ture and evolution of science. The science of the study of collaboration networks and the path org/10.1126/ fields of science, a funda- science (SciSci) offers a quantitative understanding of impactful discoveries through the study of science.aao0185 mental challenge going .................................................. Downloaded from of the interactions among scientific agents across citation networks. Microscopic models have traced forward is accounting for diverse geographic and temporal scales: It provides the dynamics of citation accumulation, allowing undeniable differences in culture, habits, and insights into the conditions underlying creativity us to predict the future impact of individual preferences between different fields and coun- and the genesis of scientific discovery, with the papers. SciSci has revealed choices and trade-offs tries. This variation makes some cross-domain ultimate goal of developing tools and policies that scientists face as they advance both their own insights difficult to appreciate and associated that have the potential to accelerate science. In careers and the scientific horizon. For example, mea- science policies difficult to implement. The differ- the past decade, SciSci has benefited from an in- surements indicate that scholars are risk-averse, ences among the questions, data, and skills specif- http://science.sciencemag.org/ flux of natural, computational, and social scien- preferring to study topics related to their current ic to each discipline suggest that further insights tists who together have developed big data–based expertise, which constrains the potential of future can be gained from domain-specific SciSci studies, capabilities for empirical analysis and generative discoveries. Those willing to break this pattern which model and identify opportunities adapted modeling that capture the unfolding of science, engage in riskier careers but become more likely to to the needs of individual research fields.▪ its institutions, and its workforce. The value prop- make major breakthroughs. Overall, the highest- osition of SciSci is that with a deeper understand- impact science is grounded in conventional combi- The list of author affiliations is available in the full article online. ing of the factors that drive successful science, we nations of prior work but features unusual *Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] (S.F.); [email protected] (A.-L.B.) can more effectively address environmental, soci- combinations. Last, as the locus of research is Cite this article as S. Fortunato et al., Science 359,eaao0185 etal, and technological problems. shifting into teams, SciSci is increasingly focused on (2018). DOI: 10.1126/science.aao0185 on March 1, 2018 The complexity of science. Science can be seen as an expanding and evolving network of ideas, scholars, and papers. SciSci searches for universal and domain-specific laws underlying the structure and dynamics of science. ILLUSTRATION: NICOLE SAMAY Fortunato et al., Science 359, 1007 (2018) 2 March 2018 1of1 RESEARCH ◥ and from innovation studies, it explores and REVIEW identifies pathways through which science con- tributes to invention and economic change. SciSci relies on a broad collection of quantitative SCIENCE COMMUNITY methods, from descriptive statistics and data visualization to advanced econometric methods, network science approaches, machine-learning Science of science algorithms, mathematical analysis, and compu- ter simulation, including agent-based modeling. The value proposition of SciSci hinges on the Santo Fortunato,1,2* Carl T. Bergstrom,3 Katy Börner,2,4 James A. Evans,5 hypothesis that with a deeper understanding of Dirk Helbing,6 Staša Milojević,1 Alexander M. Petersen,7 Filippo Radicchi,1 the factors behind successful science, we can en- Roberta Sinatra,8,9,10 Brian Uzzi,11,12 Alessandro Vespignani,10,13,14 Ludo Waltman,15 hance the prospects of science as a whole to more Dashun Wang,11,12 Albert-László Barabási8,10,16* effectively address societal problems. Networks of scientists, institutions, Identifying fundamental drivers of science and developing predictive models to capture its and ideas evolution are instrumental for the design of policies that can improve the scientific enterprise— for example, through enhanced career paths for scientists, better performance evaluation for Contemporary science is a dynamical system of organizations hosting research, discovery of novel effective funding vehicles, and even undertakings driven by complex interactions identification of promising regions along the scientific frontier. The science of science uses among social structures, knowledge representa- large-scale data on the production of science to search for universal and domain-specific tions, and the natural world. Scientific knowledge Downloaded from patterns. Here, we review recent developments in this transdisciplinary field. is constituted by concepts and relations embodied in research papers, books, patents, software, and other scholarly artifacts, organized into scientific he deluge of digital data on scholarly out- millions of data points pertaining to scientists disciplines and broader fields. These social, con- put offers unprecedented opportunities to and their output and capturing research from all ceptual, and material elements are connected explore patterns characterizing the struc- over the world and all branches of science. Sec- through formal and informal flows of informa- T ture and evolution of science. The science ond, SciSci has benefited from an influx of and tion, ideas, research practices, tools, and samples. http://science.sciencemag.org/ of science (SciSci) places the practice of collaborations among natural, computational, Science can thus be described as a complex, self- science itself under the microscope, leading to and social scientists who have developed big organizing, and constantly evolving multiscale a quantitative understanding of the genesis of data–based capabilities and enabled critical network. scientific discovery, creativity, and practice and tests of generative models that aim to capture Early studies discovered an exponential growth developing tools and policies aimed at accelerat- the unfolding of science, its institutions, and in the volume of scientific literature (2), a trend ing scientific progress. its workforce. that continues with an average doubling period The emergence of SciSci has been driven by One distinctive characteristic of this emerging of 15 years (Fig. 1). Yet, it would be naïve to two key factors. The first is data availability. In field is how it breaks down disciplinary bounda- equate the growth of the scientific literature with addition to the proprietary Web of Science (WoS), ries. SciSci integrates findings and theories from the growth of scientific ideas. Changes in the the historic first citation index (1), multiple data multiple disciplines and uses a wide range of publishing world, both technological and eco- sources are available today (Scopus, PubMed, data and methods. From scientometrics, it takes nomic, have led to increasing efficiency in the on March 1, 2018 Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, the U.S. the idea of measuring science from large-scale production of publications. Moreover, new pub- Patent and Trademark Office, and others). Some data sources; from the sociology of science, it lications in science tend to cluster in discrete of these sources are freely accessible, covering adopts theoretical concepts and social processes; areas of knowledge (3). Large-scale text analysis, Fig. 1. Growth of science. (A) Annual production of scientific articles indexed in the WoS database. (B) Growth of ideas covered by articles indexed in the WoS. This was determined by counting unique title phrases (concepts) in a fixed number of articles (4). 1Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University, Bloomington,