According to a new study there are too many scientific studies. These increasing quantities of studies make it difficult for scientists and researchers to keep track of everything. The professors from universities in Finland and California have published a new paper entitled Attention decay in science.
In this paper they reported that "The exponential growth in the number of scientific papers makes it increasingly difficult for researchers to keep track of all the publications relevant to their work. Consequently the attention that can be devoted to individual papers measured by their citation counts is bound to decay rapidly".
According to the study it was found that the "decay" in the scientist's interest and attention towards scientific research in their respective field is increasing. Due to the ever-increasing studies the scientists tend to forget their previous studies more quickly.
The paper indicated that the decay is increasing and compared with the past, scientists presently tend to forget information more easily. It was also found that due the increase in number of publications, the number of turnover papers and studies also increases. Due to this it becomes difficult for scientists and researchers to keep themselves constantly updated.
Scientists have also reported that along with the exponential growth of information, the effect of the digital age is also having its toll over the human intellect.
The study explained that in recent years due to the Internet, vast quantity of data has allowed a thorough investigation of the dynamics of consideration to online data like news, videos, memes, blogs, reports etc. The consideration here means that the data is termed popular on the basis of the amount of people visited, followed, downloaded, tweeted etc. And this popularity decreases with time because of the human tendency to pay consideration on new information is restricted.
It also further quoted that "Nowadays papers are forgotten more quickly. Attention of scholars depends on the number of published items, not on real time."
