14219: How Researchers (Re)Position Themselves During the Emergence of Interdisciplinary Scientific Fields (session 25946)

Interdisciplinary scientific fields emerge at the intersections of existing disciplines, driving innovations that can be well-suited to address societal challenges. While the literature recognizes the role of individual researchers in advancing these fields, less is known about how researchers position or reposition themselves during the emergence of an interdisciplinary scientific field. Focusing on synthetic biology as a case, this study analyzes publication and research grant data to explore how researchers contribute to the evolutionary processes shaping this new interdisciplinary field. By employing a temporal partitioning approach, we investigate different researcher types at various stages of the field’s evolution. Random forest regression analysis is used to identify the characteristics of researchers that drive the evolution of the field in terms of impact, innovation orientation, social centrality, and interdisciplinarity. Our findings highlight the critical innovative role of early- and mid-career researchers in the early phases of field evolution. Additionally, our study reveals that researchers with a more distant academic background to the emerging interdisciplinary scientific field are more engaged in interdisciplinary research activities than those with a higher proximity. These insights advance our understanding of how researchers navigate and shape emerging fields, offering insights into which researchers contribute to field formation and enhancing our knowledge of the micro-level dynamics underpinning the emergence of interdisciplinary scientific fields.

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