Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA.
Department of Industrial and Management Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang, Republic of Korea.
Nat Hum Behav. 2022 Sep;6(9):1206-1217. doi: 10.1038/s41562-022-01367-x. Epub 2022 Jun 2.
Science is essential to innovation and economic prosperity. Although studies have shown that national scientific development is affected by geographic, historic and economic factors, it remains unclear whether there are universal structures and trajectories of national scientific development that can inform forecasting and policy-making. Here, by examining the scientific 'exports'-publications that are indexed in international databases-of countries, we reveal a three-cluster structure in the relatedness network of disciplines that underpin national scientific development and the organization of global science. Tracing the evolution of national research portfolios reveals that while nations are proceeding to more diverse research profiles individually, scientific production is increasingly specialized in global science over the past decades. By uncovering the underlying structure of scientific development and connecting it with economic development, our results may offer a new perspective on the evolution of global science.
科学对于创新和经济繁荣至关重要。尽管研究表明，国家科学发展受到地理、历史和经济因素的影响，但目前尚不清楚是否存在可以为预测和决策提供信息的国家科学发展的普遍结构和轨迹。在这里，通过研究科学的“出口”——在国际数据库中索引的出版物，我们揭示了支撑国家科学发展和全球科学组织的学科相关性网络中的一个三聚类结构。追踪国家研究组合的演变表明，尽管各国各自在朝着更加多样化的研究方向发展，但在过去几十年中，科学生产在全球科学领域的专业化程度越来越高。通过揭示科学发展的基础结构，并将其与经济发展联系起来，我们的研究结果可能为全球科学的演变提供一个新的视角。
