Being Together in Place as a Catalyst for Scientific Advance

TL;DR

This study shows that physical proximity within institutions enhances scientific influence, especially when referencing diverse work, highlighting the importance of diverse interactions for research progress.

Contribution

It reveals that being at the same institution and referencing diverse work significantly boosts scientific influence, emphasizing the role of physical proximity and diversity in research advancement.

Findings

Physical proximity correlates with increased intellectual influence.

Diverse referenced work from colleagues enhances influence.

Institutional interactions foster sustained scientific progress.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated social distancing at every level of society, including universities and research institutes, raising essential questions concerning the continuing importance of physical proximity for scientific and scholarly advance. Using customized author surveys about the intellectual influence of referenced work on scientists' own papers, combined with precise measures of geographical and semantic distance between focal and referenced works, we find that being at the same institution is strongly associated with intellectual influence on scientists' and scholars' published work. However, this influence increases with intellectual distance: the more different the referenced work done by colleagues at one's institution, the more influential it is on one's own. Universities worldwide constitute places where people doing very different work engage in sustained interactions through departments, committees, seminars, and communities. These interactions come to uniquely influence their published research, suggesting the need to replace rather than displace diverse engagements for sustainable advance.