Emerging Mechanisms and Scientific Breakthrough Identification

Scientific breakthroughs not only rely on creativity and the quality of an idea itself, but also on whether the scientific community in which the idea emerges recognizes and builds upon it. However, its early recognition is key but difficult as there can be significantly delays and no guarantee that the idea will be recognized at all. Researchers have tried to explore the very nature of these scientific breakthroughs and employed various methods, such as machine learning, complex network indicators, citations analysis, etc, to detect it, but there seems no satisfactory conclusions, and the emerging mechanism of these breakthrough still needs to be further explored.

Recently, advancements in multilayer network, heterogeneous knowledge graphs, and the related simulation tools provide us an insight to uncover the veil of mystery, to a large extent. To advance our understanding of the emerging mechanism of it, and facilitate the early detection of scientific breakthrough, this Research Topic aims to collect excellent ideas and research around the topic of “emerging mechanisms and scientific breakthrough identification”.

We welcome submissions on the following areas to the collection:

• Review on scientific breakthrough identification
• Advanced identification techniques
• Theory and methodology
• Case study
• Other topic-related studies

Keywords: Scientific Breakthrough, Breakthrough Identification, Identification Techniques

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.