Is low interdisciplinarity of references an unexpected characteristic of Nobel Prize winning research?

Abstract

In this contribution, we conduct a multi-angular analysis of the interdisciplinarity of Nobel Prize winning research compared to non-Nobel Prize winning articles, based on a large data set. Here interdisciplinarity is measured by the diversity of references, using two true diversity indicators.Articles mentioned by the Nobel Prize committee in Physiology or Medicine (in short: NP articles) awarded during the period from 1900 to 2016 are the focus of our research. These articles are compared with those in a dataset of articles that do not include a Nobel Prize winner among their authors.Moreover, these non-NPs articles were not only published in the same year and in the same research field as the NP ones but were also dealing with the same research topic (such articles are referred to as non-NP articles).The results suggest that the topic-related knowledge included in Nobel Prize winning work is higher than that in non-NPs, hence with lower interdisciplinarity than the latter. Our findings provide useful clues to better understand the characteristics of transformative research, here represented 2 by key publications by Nobel Prize laureates in Physiology or Medicine, and their pattern of knowledge integration.

Scientific rewards for biomedical specialization are large and persistent

“…For example, a bag containing candy in a variety of colors in roughly equal proportions would have a high balance, while one in which the vast majority are blue would have a low balance. This concept is often operationalized on the paper level using either the Shannon entropy or the reverse Gini coefficients of the set of disciplinary categories extracted from the references in each paper [16,17,32,38,39]. By categorizing interdisciplinarity into variety, balance, and disparity, it is possible to jointly estimate the effects of each of these concepts on impact.…”

Research funding and citations in papers of Nobel Laureates in Physics, Chemistry and Medicine, 2019-2020

“…Turki et al (2020) investigate the scientific production, citations and co-citation networks of Nobel winners to explain, how and when Nobel-awarded discoveries have been achieved and published. Li et al (2022) conduct a scientometric analysis of the interdisciplinarity of research by scholars winning Nobel Prize compared to non-Nobel Prize in the field of physiology. Results show that papers of Nobel Prize winners have a lower interdisciplinarity than studies of non-Nobel Prize scholars.…”