A study finds that scientists are cited less when they switch fields
The Pivot Penalty and the Shift from Research Area to Domain: How researchers lose citation impact when moving away from your original field of expertise
It can have negative ramifications for a scientist when they switch to a different research field. A team assessed millions of scientific papers and concluded that, when a scientist moves away from their original area of expertise, their publications receive fewer citations than their previous work. The larger the shift, the greater the effect — a phenomenon the authors of the study have named the ‘pivot penalty’.
“It’s a very strong relationship, and it’s pretty universal,” says co-author Benjamin Jones, an economist at Northwestern University, who points out that the trend holds for patents as well. The analysed patents showed a correlation when evaluating technology areas in the patent’s citations.
This shows the scientific fields that a researcher may draw from, says Dashun Wang, a co-author of the study. According to Wang, if all of a sudden, he is citing journals that he hasn’t cited before, it is an indication that he is doing something different than what he usually does.
The results of the analysis show that when you move out of the area where you are trusted, you lose that recognition. The sheer amount of data the team evaluated made the study unique, he says.
These new findings must therefore be closely studied by those who evaluate the work of researchers. Even if only once in a while researchers need to be able to go outside of their areas of specialism, even without a penalty to their career. That means ensuring that citation impact is not emphasized over measures that recognize such collaboration. According to James Wilsdon, director of the Research on Research Institute in London, the paper’s value is beyond citation counts.
Some researchers will already have a record of, if not a reputation for, working with colleagues from different disciplines. The pivot penalty is when people make a change to what they are doing.
