EAGER: Collaborative Research: Group Dynamics and Success in Science and Research

Dr. Brian Uzzi will work on developing models of the DNA of a scientific paper with the objective of understanding how the DNA forms, changes, and is related to impact. The DNA of a paper and its associated network of connected ideas and authors provides an architecture at the level of people and ideas that can aid in understanding and predicting team fusion and fission. By measuring how scientists in the act of writing papers and assembling new ideas associate authors in their within-paper citation patterns, we can crowdsource an original and valid measure of the field-wide association of authors and ideas from the perspective of informed scientists aiming to make breakthroughs. For example, when authors are cited more than expected by chance within the same scientific paper near one another as opposed to far from one another (i.e., cited within the same bracket, sentence, paragraph or section), it suggests that the authors’ work or their ideas are closely related and similar in the minds of practicing scientists. Also, it suggests that paired authors’ knowledge bases are similar rather than different.