The boundary-spanning mechanisms of Nobel Prize winning papers.

The breakthrough potentials of research papers can be explained by their boundary-spanning qualities. Here, for the first time, we apply the structural variation analysis (SVA) model and its affiliated metrics to investigate the extent to which such qualities characterize a group of Nobel Prize winn...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Yakub Sebastian, Chaomei Chen
Format: article
Language:EN
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021
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Online Access:https://doaj.org/article/ba1643f4c033494893f1bed66540a16f
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Summary:The breakthrough potentials of research papers can be explained by their boundary-spanning qualities. Here, for the first time, we apply the structural variation analysis (SVA) model and its affiliated metrics to investigate the extent to which such qualities characterize a group of Nobel Prize winning papers. We find that these papers share remarkable boundary-spanning traits, marked by exceptional abilities to connect disparate and topically-diverse clusters of research papers. Further, their publications exert structural variations on a scale that significantly alters the betweenness centrality distributions in existing intellectual space. Overall, SVA not only provides a set of leading indicators for describing future Nobel Prize winning papers, but also broadens our understanding of similar prize-winning properties that may have been overlooked among other regular publications.