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Taking census of physics

Nature Reviews Physics volume 1, pages 89–97 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Over the past decades, the diversity of areas explored by physicists has exploded, encompassing new topics from biophysics and chemical physics to network science. However, it is unclear how these new subfields emerged from the traditional subject areas and how physicists explore them. To map out the evolution of physics subfields, here, we take an intellectual census of physics by studying physicists’ careers. We use a large-scale publication data set, identify the subfields of 135,877 physicists and quantify their heterogeneous birth, growth and migration patterns among research areas. We find that the majority of physicists began their careers in only three subfields, branching out to other areas at later career stages, with different rates and transition times. Furthermore, we analyse the productivity, impact and team sizes across different subfields, finding drastic changes attributable to the recent rise in large-scale collaborations. This detailed, longitudinal census of physics can inform resource allocation policies and provide students, editors and scientists with a broader view of the field’s internal dynamics.

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Fig. 1: Census of the physics subfields.
Fig. 2: Evolution of physics subfields and careers.
Fig. 3: Productivity and impact across physics communities.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the John Templeton Foundation Grant #61066 (A.-L.B., F.B., R.S. and M.S.), the Intellectual Themes Initiative (ITI) project ‘Just Data’, funded by Central European University (F.M. and R.S.), the National Science Foundation grant SBE 1829344 (D.W.) and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research grants FA9550-15-1-0077 (A.-L.B., R.S. and M.S.), FA9550-15-1-0364 (A.-L.B. and R.S.), FA9550-15-1-0162 (D.W.) and FA9550-17-1-0089 (D.W.).

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Federico Battiston, Federico Musciotto

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Network and Data Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

    Federico Battiston, Federico Musciotto, Albert-László Barabási, Michael Szell & Roberta Sinatra

  2. Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Dashun Wang

  3. Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Dashun Wang

  4. Network Science Institute, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Albert-László Barabási, Michael Szell & Roberta Sinatra

  5. Center for Cancer Systems Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA

    Albert-László Barabási

  6. MTA KRTK Agglomeration and Social Networks Lendulet Research Group, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary

    Michael Szell

  7. Department of Mathematics, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

    Roberta Sinatra

  8. ISI Foundation, Torino, Italy

    Roberta Sinatra

Authors
  1. Federico Battiston
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Contributions

A.-L.B., R.S., M.S. and D.W. conceived the study. All authors designed the research, discussed the results and commented on the manuscript. F.B., F.M. and R.S. developed the methods. F.B. and F.M. analysed the data. M.S. and R.S. directed the research. F.B., F.M., M.S. and R.S. led the writing of the manuscript and A.-L.B. and D.W. edited the manuscript. F.B. and F.M. wrote the supplementary information.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Roberta Sinatra.

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Battiston, F., Musciotto, F., Wang, D. et al. Taking census of physics. Nat Rev Phys 1, 89–97 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-018-0005-3

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