Data Brief

High-impact papers and patents are less likely with larger research pivots

Across more than 25 million scientific papers and 1.7 million patents, the probability of being highly cited declines steadily with larger pivots into new fields — from about 8% for the smallest pivots to under 4% for the largest.

The y-axis shows the probability that a paper or patent falls into the 95th percentile of citations within its field and publication year — in other words, the chance of being among the top 5% most cited works. The x-axis measures pivot size, a metric developed by the authors that quantifies how far a work departs from its creator’s prior research. Pivot size is calculated by comparing the subject areas of a new paper or patent to the subject areas of the author’s or inventor’s earlier output: small pivots reuse familiar categories, while large pivots draw heavily from unfamiliar ones.
Chart: Asimov PressSource: Hill R. et al.Get the data