Park, M., Leahey, E. & Funk, R.J. Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time. Nature 613, 138–144 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05543-x
Abstract: Theories of scientific and technological change view discovery and invention as endogenous processes, wherein previous accumulated knowledge enables future progress by allowing researchers to, in Newton’s words, ‘stand on the shoulders of giants. Recent decades have witnessed exponential growth in the volume of new scientific and technological knowledge, thereby creating conditions that should be ripe for major advances. Yet contrary to this view, studies suggest that progress is slowing in several major fields. Here, we analyse these claims at scale across six decades, using data on 45 million papers and 3.9 million patents from six large-scale datasets, together with a new quantitative metric—the CD index—that characterizes how papers and patents change networks of citations in science and technology. We find that papers and patents are increasingly less likely to break with the past in ways that push science and technology in new directions. This pattern holds universally across fields and is robust across multiple different citation- and text-based metrics. Subsequently, we link this decline in disruptiveness to a narrowing in the use of previous knowledge, allowing us to reconcile the patterns we observe with the ‘shoulders of giants’ view. We find that the observed declines are unlikely to be driven by changes in the quality of published science, citation practices or field-specific factors. Overall, our results suggest that slowing rates of disruption may reflect a fundamental shift in the nature of science and technology.
Main
Although the past century witnessed an unprecedented expansion of scientific and technological knowledge, there are concerns that innovative activity is slowing. Studies document declining research productivity in semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and other fields. Papers, patents and even grant applications have become less novel relative to prior work and less likely to connect disparate areas of knowledge, both of which are precursors of innovation. The gap between the year of discovery and the awarding of a Nobel Prize has also increased, suggesting that today’s contributions do not measure up to the past. These trends have attracted increasing attention from policymakers, as they pose substantial threats to economic growth, human health and wellbeing, and national security, along with global efforts to combat grand challenges such as climate change.
Numerous explanations for this slowdown have been proposed. Some point to a dearth of ‘low-hanging fruit’ as the readily available productivity-enhancing innovations have already been made. Others emphasize the increasing burden of knowledge; scientists and inventors require ever more training to reach the frontiers of their fields, leaving less time to push those frontiers forward. Yet much remains unknown, not merely about the causes of slowing innovative activity, but also the depth and breadth of the phenomenon. The decline is difficult to reconcile with centuries of observation by philosophers of science, who characterize the growth of knowledge as an endogenous process, wherein previous knowledge enables future discovery, a view captured famously in Newton’s observation that if he had seen further, it was by ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’. Moreover, to date, the evidence pointing to a slowdown is based on studies of particular fields, using disparate and domain-specific metrics, making it difficult to know whether the changes are happening at similar rates across areas of science and technology. Little is also known about whether the patterns seen in aggregate indicators mask differences in the degree to which individual works push the frontier.
We address these gaps in understanding by analysing 25 million papers (1945–2010) in the Web of Science (WoS) (Methods) and 3.9 million patents (1976–2010) in the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) Patents View database (Methods). The WoS data include 390 million citations, 25 million paper titles and 13 million abstracts. The Patents View data include 35 million citations, 3.9 million patent titles and 3.9 million abstracts. Subsequently, we replicate our core findings on four additional datasets—JSTOR, the American Physical Society corpus, Microsoft Academic Graph and PubMed—encompassing 20 million papers. Using these data, we join a new citation-based measure with textual analyses of titles and abstracts to understand whether papers and patents forge new directions over time and across fields.
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