Trends in emerging topics generation across countries in life science and medicine

Abstract

While advantages of global homogenization and standardization have been discussed on scientific and technological research activities, specific discussion on the disadvantages to generate scientific innovation has been limited. In this study, we aim to clarify the impact of globalization to generate emerging topics in life science and medicine by applying the emerging keywords (EKs) and highly successful emerging keywords (HS-EKs) methodology, which represent scientometric elements of emerging topics and high-impact emerging topics, respectively, as indicators. We analyzed all paper output from 53 countries using PubMed and found a global increase in paper output and EK generation in line with economic growth in the past 50 years. However, the efficiency to generate scientific innovation, reflected in HS-EKs, was significantly reduced and this effect was independent of country-level economic output. We also reported homogenization in research topics over the study period as a possible factor for the observed decrease in HS-EK generation efficiency. Finally, we discuss the foundational issues that gave rise to homogenized science, the impact on scientific innovation, and what policies might be necessary to repair the scientific innovation-generating engine.