Doscientiststracehottopics.PDF

OPEN Do scientists trace hot topics? Tian Wei1, Menghui Li2,3, Chensheng Wu1,4, Xiao-Yong Yan1,5, Ying Fan1, Zengru Di1 Jinshan Wu1 SUBJECT AREAS: COMPLEX NETWORKS 1School of Systems Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, P. R. China, 2Temasek Laboratories, National University of 3 SCIENTIFIC DATA Singapore, 117508, Singapore, Beijing-Hong Kong-Singapore Joint Centre for Nonlinear Complex Systems (Singapore), National University of Singapore - Kent Ridge, 119260, Singapore, 4Beijing Institute of Science and Technology Intelligence, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 5 Beijing, 100044, P. R. China, Centre for Complex Systems Research, Shijiazhuang Tiedao University, Shijiazhuang, 050043, P. R. INFORMATION THEORY AND China. COMPUTATION Do scientists follow hot topics in their scientific investigations? In this paper, by performing analysis to Received papers published in the American Physical Society (APS) Physical Review journals, it is found that papers 22 March 2013 are more likely to be attracted by hot fields, where the hotness of a field is measured by the number of papers belonging to the field. This indicates that scientists generally do follow hot topics. However, there are Accepted qualitative differences among scientists from various countries, among research works regarding different 1 July 2013 number of authors, different number of affiliations and different number of references. These observations could be valuable for policy makers when deciding research funding and also for individual researchers Published when searching for scientific projects. 16 July 2013