Abstract
Science typically advances in small incremental steps, but in some rare instances it leaps forward. One discovery or invention can change how we see the world around us. Would it not be neat to be able to accurately pinpoint those moments of time in an objective way and thereby investigate science and technology’s progress? In 2016, Russel Funk of the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management and Jason Owen-Smith from the University of Michigan published a measure for exactly this purpose.1 Their so-called consolidation-disruption (CD) index quantifies the extent to which published findings affect the subsequent use of the knowledge on which those findings relied. Worryingly, a widely cited subsequent study applied this measure on patents and scientific publications, finding a slowdown in disruptive progress.2 Thickening the plot, a later preprint attributed the finding to dataset artefacts.3 These studies prompt the need for an efficient way to calculate the CD index on large amounts of openly available data. [...]
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 22-25 |
| Number of pages | 4 |
| Journal | IEEE Software |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2025 |
Bibliographical note
Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-careOtherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.