85432 20200716101550.0 doi 10.1140/epjds/s13688-019-0205-9 sideral 114157 ART-2019-114157 eng (orcid)0000-0002-1192-8707 Aleta, Alberto Universidad de Zaragoza Explore with caution: mapping the evolution of scientific interest in physics 2019 Access copy available to the general public Unrestricted In the book The Essential Tension (1979) Thomas Kuhn described the conflict between tradition and innovation in scientific research-i.e., the desire to explore new promising areas, counterposed to the need to capitalize on the work done in the past. While it is probable that along their careers many scientists felt this tension, only few works have tried to quantify it. Here, we address this question by analyzing a large-scale dataset, containing all the papers published by the American Physical Society (APS) in 26 years, which allows for a better understanding of scientists'' careers evolution in Physics. We employ the Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme (PACS) present in each paper to map the scientific interests of 103, 246 authors and their evolution along the years. Our results indeed confirm the existence of the "essential tension" with scientists balancing between exploring the boundaries of their area and exploiting previous work. In particular, we found that although the majority of physicists change the topics of their research, they stay within the same broader area thus exploring with caution new scientific endeavors. Furthermore, we quantify the flows of authors moving between different subfields and pinpoint which areas are more likely to attract or donate researchers to the other ones. Overall, our results depict a very distinctive portrait of the evolution of research interests in Physics and can help in designing specific policies for the future. info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MINECO/MDM-2017-0711 info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MINECO/FIS2017-87519-P info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MINECO/FIS2014-55867-P info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MICINN/RTI2018-093732-B-C22 info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA/E36-17R info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess by http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ 2.873 2019 MATHEMATICS, INTERDISCIPLINARY APPLICATIONS 19 / 106 = 0.179 2019 Q1 T1 SOCIAL SCIENCES, MATHEMATICAL METHODS 8 / 51 = 0.157 2019 Q1 T1 0.903 2019 Computer Science Applications 2019 Q1 Modeling and Simulation 2019 Q1 Computational Mathematics 2019 Q2 info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion (orcid)0000-0001-6202-3302 Meloni, Sandro Perra, Nicola (orcid)0000-0002-0895-1893 Moreno, Yamir Universidad de Zaragoza 2004 405 Universidad de Zaragoza Dpto. Física Teórica Área Física Teórica 8, 27 (2019), [15 pp.] EPJ data sci. EPJ Data Science 2193-1127 2046547 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/85432/files/texto_completo.pdf Versión publicada 93805 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/85432/files/texto_completo.jpg?subformat=icon icon Versión publicada oai:zaguan.unizar.es:85432 articulos driver 2020-07-16-09:45:29 ARTICLE