Do scientists trace hot topics?

TL;DR

This study analyzes publication patterns in APS Physical Review journals and finds that scientists tend to follow hot topics, with variations based on country, team size, and references, informing policy and research strategies.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence that scientists are influenced by hot topics and highlights qualitative differences among researchers from various backgrounds.

Findings

Scientists are more likely to publish in hot fields.

Differences exist among countries, team sizes, and references.

Hotness is measured by the number of papers in a field.

Abstract

Do scientists follow hot topics in their scientific investigations? In this paper, by performing analysis to papers published in the American Physical Society (APS) Physical Review journals, it is found that papers 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 qualitative differences among scientists from various countries, among research works regarding different 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 when searching for scientific projects.