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arXiv · 2609.08468

The conservative turn in science: The changing character of knowledge recombination

Cheng Zhang·Xinkun Liang·Yi Bu·Hongkan Chen
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Abstract

This study examines how the dominant mode of cross-disciplinary knowledge combination has changed over time. It addresses a limitation of existing studies that document declining disruptiveness at the level of individual works but do not reveal whether the mechanisms of cross-disciplinary knowledge flow have themselves shifted. Drawing on 56 million publications and 816 million citations from OpenAlex (1960-2025), the study classifies cross-disciplinary citations into five types based on the set relationship between the subfield portfolios of citing and cited publications and introduces a semantic-distance measure derived from SPECTER-v2 embeddings of publication abstracts. It subsequently demonstrates that cross-disciplinary citations have shifted markedly away from configurations with no shared disciplinary ground toward types built on partially overlapping knowledge bases, a reorientation further reflected in a steady decline in average semantic distance between citing and cited fields. This shift co-occurs with a diffusion of brokerage positions across the network and a greater reliance on older literature, consistent with a system that has become broader and more decentralized in its interdisciplinary reach. Finally, this study discusses the implications of these findings for science policy and for the design of cross-disciplinary funding mechanisms.

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Cheng Zhang, Xinkun Liang, Yi Bu, Hongkan Chen. 2026-09-08. The conservative turn in science: The changing character of knowledge recombination. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.08468

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