Using Citation Classics to study the incidence of serendipity in scientific discovery

Journal/Book: Scientometrics. 1996; 37: PO Box 211, 1000 AE Amsterdam, Netherlands. Elsevier Science BV. 3-24.

Abstract: The main sociological, philosophical and historical approaches only ascribe a relative importance to the role of chance, error, or accident in scientific progress. The literature on this topic tends to be anecdotal, sometimes hagiographic and rarely systematic. The main goal of this paper is to introduce a new approach to the study of serendipity in scientific discovery. This new approach is based in the study of highly cited papers obtained from the Citation Classics feature of Current Contents. This paper re-examines 205 Citation Classics commentaries from the 400 most-cited papers in the recent history of science. Authors of 17 Citation Classics commentaries (8.3%) mention some kind of serendipity in performing the research reported in the highly cited paper. Commentaries are classified and discussed in detail. In addition, I have examinated the original papers identified above. In 5 from the original highly cited papers authors explained or gave enough hints on the way the serendipitous discovery was done.

Note: Article JM Campanario, Univ Alcala de Henares, Dept Fis, Grp Invest Aprendizaje Ciencias, Alcala de Henares 28871, Madrid, Spain

Keyword(s): MOST-CITED PAPERS; SCI 1945-1988; DELAYED RECOGNITION; TIME; SCIENCE; HISTORY

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