Tradition and Innovation in Scientists’ Research Strategies

By Jacob Gates Foster, Andrey Rzhetsky, James A. Evans. arXiv.org, 2013

540 citations recorded by the source corpus.

What factors affect a scientist’s choice of research problem? Qualitative research in the history and sociology of science suggests that this choice is patterned by an “essential tension” between productive tradition and risky innovation. We examine this tension through Bourdieu’s field theory of science, and we explore it empirically by analyzing millions of biomedical abstracts from MEDLINE. We represent the evolving state of chemical knowledge with networks extracted from these abstracts. We then develop a typology of research strategies on these networks. Scientists can introduce novel chemicals and chemical relationships (innovation) or delve deeper into known ones (tradition). They can consolidate knowledge clusters or bridge them. The aggregate distribution of published strategies remains remarkably stable. High-risk innovation strategies are rare and reflect a growing focus on established knowledge. An innovative publication is more likely to achieve high impact than a conservative one, but the additional reward does not compensate for the risk of failing to publish. By studying prizewinners in biomedicine and chemistry, we show that occasional gambles for extraordinary impact are a compelling explanation for observed levels of risky innovation. Our analysis of the essential tension identifies institutional forces that sustain tradition and suggests policy interventions to foster innovation.

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/89dbb8a310d5de25251c1eb7ebf5633953677302

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Sociology and Political Science

In Statistics and Probability

Citations in the corpus

Prominent but Less Productive (2015, background): “Yet experimenting with new combinations is also uncertain and risky (Fleming, 2001; Foster, Rzhetsky, and Evans, 2015): it may sustain benefits overall but also experience a higher variance in reception.”
PaperRobot: Incremental Draft Generation of Scientific Ideas (2019, background): “Foster et al. (2015) shows that more than 60% of 6.4 million papers in biomedicine and chemistry are about incremental work.”
Which Type of Citation Analysis Generates the Most Accurate Taxonomy of Scientific and Technical Knowledge? (2015, methodology): “Further, we envision that an accurate taxonomy could be used to identify those topics where ‘jumps’ and ‘bridges’ (Foster, Rzhetsky, & Evans, 2015) are most likely to occur in the future, and that this might help us identify the actors (Latour, 1987) – scientists, funders, chemicals, equipment,…”
The science of science: from the perspective of complex systems (2017, background): “categorized the research strategies that are used by scientists facing the knowledge network [391]: jump, new consolidation, repeat consolidation, new bridge and repeat bridge.”
What makes qualitative research good research? An exploratory analysis of critical elements. (2017, background): “For instance, the relevance of the research topic can be borne of current political debates in each area, thus when the topic is chosen, it will evoke some excitement (Guba & Lincoln, 1989; Foster et al., 2015).”
The Diversity–Innovation Paradox in Science (2019, background): “Scientific development is then the process where concepts are added to the ever-growing “ constellation ”— i.e., our accumulating corpus of texts — in new combinations: The introduction of new links between scientific concepts (14, 15, 28 – 30).”