Migration of scientists to novel areas of biomedical research: Role of article‑related productivity

Abstract

In a previous study (Kissin 2011), frequency of a surname among the general population and the number of articles published by all authors with exactly the same surname were used to estimate surname‑based article‑related productivity. The main aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that researchers with high productivity are more heavily represented in emerging areas of research than in established areas. As the basis for this study, we used our results on a set of 96 Jewish surname‑based groups that have high ratios of actual to expected number of articles (Kissin and Bradley 2013). Seven emerging areas of biomedical research (“angioplasty,” “coronary angiography,” “genomics,” “HIV infections,” “meta‑analysis,” “statins,” and “stem cells”) were paired with well‑established areas. It was found that disproportionally high representation of 96 Jewish surname‑based groups in well‑established areas (10.2 ± 0.4, mean ± SE) is even higher in emerging areas (18.2 ± 2.6, P < 0.03), indicating a disproportional gravitation of these scientists to emerging areas of biomedical research.

Keywords: Biomedical research; emerging research areas; scientific productivity; surnames