Researchers who "get into" new areas should not be punished for quoting

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the value of changing the direction in research. This should be encouraged, encouraged and celebrated.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists covering many disciplines joined a huge global effort to study the SARS-CoV-2 virus. They helped control its spread, analyzed its impact and contributed to the development of vaccines and treatments. The Nature news team reported how researchers in disciplines from ecology to artificial intelligence and architecture "depart" from their main areas to study the virus. Studies have shown a variety of research groups on COVID-191.

But how can such turns affect the career prospects of a scientist? The answer to this question is given in an article published this week in Nature2, and it's not exactly Encouraging. This suggests that those who hold responsible positions in science should do more to encourage researchers who want to work with colleagues in various fields.

Ryan Hill, an economist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and his colleagues found that the further a researcher moves away from his main field of research, the fewer citations his new work receives. They call this phenomenon a "key fine", given that quotations are often used as an indicator of the impact of research and play a role in making decisions about promotion.

The researchers' conclusion is based on the analysis of millions of U.S. scientific articles and patents over the past five decades. To assess how far the article moved away from the author's previous work, the researchers compared the list of journals cited by the new article with the journals in the author's previous publications. Based on this, they assessed whether the article is based on a similar set of knowledge or marks the transition to a new territory. According to the analysis, the negative consequences of the turn can be found in most areas of research. These effects have intensified over time.

There are extremely compelling reasons why researchers are focused on achieving progress in their own fields - gradual changes and accidental breakthroughs are, after all, the lifebloon of Scientific progress. At the same time, the world needs more researchers who can change direction and cooperate with colleagues with ideas and experience from another discipline. This does not necessarily mean a constant turn, but more that it is open to new domains. Sometimes working with researchers from outside can be a good way to attack old problems in new ways.

Studies show that interdisciplinary teams eventually generate more knowledge that has an impact than teams based on a single discipline, even if they may need more time to get results because they need time to develop a common language3. Moreover, global problems, such as preventing the spread of infectious diseases or curbing climate change, do not sit neatly in disciplinary boxes. Solving them, it will take more researchers to be able to go beyond their usual areas.

Some researchers will already have a record, if not the reputation of working with colleagues from different disciplines. The penalty for the turn occurs when someone moves from what he did before to something new.

Penalty points

There are strategies that researchers can adopt to minimize the turn penalty. Hill and his colleagues, for example, found that the fine is mitigated when researchers publish their new work in a journal in which they have already published, reaching a familiar audience.

Caroline Wagner, who studies science policy at Ohio State University at Columbus, and her colleagues4 showed that Nobel Prize winners in Physiology or Medicine worked much more often than equally famous scientists with colleagues from fields that were far from their own. "If we are looking for this spark, we are looking for those people who recombine things that do not seem to belong to each other," says Wagner. The education of this spark is certainly something that science should learn to do better.

Therefore, these new results should be carefully studied by those who evaluate the work of researchers. The world needs researchers to be able to jump beyond their areas of specialization, at least from time to time, without punishment for their career. This means ensuring that the impact of citation is not emphasized over measures that recognize such cooperation. As James Wilsdon, director of the Research Institute in London, says, the value of the article goes beyond its citation.