The amount of published scientific research has been doubling almost every 15 years (Fortunato et al). This is paired with an increasing amount of data and tools of analysis that can be used to understand how scientific research evolves. Contandriopoulos et al, Qi et al, Fortunato et al, and Li et al’s findings were used to better understand the dynamics of how scientific research creates impactful output, and how the roles individual researchers play in the network of science effects that impactful output.

Scientific research can be described as “a complex, self-organizing, and constantly evolving multi-scale network” (Fortunato et al, 2018). All of the researchers above used this network structure as a tool for analysis, focusing especially on the network of collaborators and citations.