TY - JOUR

T1 - Quantifying simultaneous innovations in evolutionary medicine

AU - Painter, Deryc T.

AU - van der Wouden, Frank

AU - Laubichler, Manfred D.

AU - Youn, Hyejin

PY - 2020/12

Y1 - 2020/12

N2 - To what extent do simultaneous innovations occur and are independently from each other? In this paper we use a novel persistent keyword framework to systematically identify innovations in a large corpus containing academic papers in evolutionary medicine between 2007 and 2011. We examine whether innovative papers occurring simultaneously are independent from each other by evaluating the citation and co-authorship information gathered from the corpus metadata. We find that 19 out of 22 simultaneous innovative papers do, in fact, occur independently from each other. In particular, co-authors of simultaneous innovative papers are no more geographically concentrated than the co-authors of similar non-innovative papers in the field. Our result suggests producing innovative work draws from a collective knowledge pool, rather than from knowledge circulating in distinct localized collaboration networks. Therefore, new ideas can appear at multiple locations and with geographically dispersed co-authorship networks. Our findings support the perspective that simultaneous innovations are the outcome of collective behavior.

AB - To what extent do simultaneous innovations occur and are independently from each other? In this paper we use a novel persistent keyword framework to systematically identify innovations in a large corpus containing academic papers in evolutionary medicine between 2007 and 2011. We examine whether innovative papers occurring simultaneously are independent from each other by evaluating the citation and co-authorship information gathered from the corpus metadata. We find that 19 out of 22 simultaneous innovative papers do, in fact, occur independently from each other. In particular, co-authors of simultaneous innovative papers are no more geographically concentrated than the co-authors of similar non-innovative papers in the field. Our result suggests producing innovative work draws from a collective knowledge pool, rather than from knowledge circulating in distinct localized collaboration networks. Therefore, new ideas can appear at multiple locations and with geographically dispersed co-authorship networks. Our findings support the perspective that simultaneous innovations are the outcome of collective behavior.

KW - Evolutionary medicine

KW - Independence

KW - Keyword extraction

KW - Novelty

KW - Simultaneous innovation

KW - Transdisciplinary studies

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85096537045&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/2b490610-2a94-32df-9a8f-84042b3c318b/

U2 - 10.1007/s12064-020-00333-3

DO - 10.1007/s12064-020-00333-3

M3 - Journal articles

C2 - 33241494

AN - SCOPUS:85096537045

VL - 139

SP - 319

EP - 335

JO - Theory in Biosciences

JF - Theory in Biosciences

SN - 1431-7613

IS - 4

ER -