The Scientific Prize Network Predicts Who Pushes the Boundaries of Science

Arxiv  August 28, 2018
Using comprehensive new data on prizes and prizewinners worldwide and across disciplines, researchers at Northwestern University examine the growth dynamics and interlocking relationships found in the worldwide scientific prize network. They focus on understanding how the knowledge linkages among prizes and scientists’ propensities for prizewinning are related to knowledge pathways across disciplines and stratification within disciplines. They found that despite a proliferation of diverse prizes over time and across the globe, prizes are more concentrated within a relatively small group of scientific elites, and ties within the elites are more clustered, a relatively constrained number of ideas and scholars lead science, certain prizes are strongly interlocked within and between disciplines by scientists who win multiple prizes, revealing the key pathways by which knowledge systematically gains credit and spreads through the network… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE