Exploring Scientific Contributions through Citation Context and Division of Labor

Scientific contributions are a direct reflection of a research paper's value, illustrating its impact on existing theories or practices. Existing measurement methods assess contributions based on the authors' perceived or self-identified contributions, while the actual contributions made by the papers are rarely investigated. This study measures the actual contributions of papers published in Nature and Science using 1.53 million citation contexts from citing literature and explores the impact pattern of division of labor (DOL) inputs on the actual contributions of papers from an input-output perspective. Results show that experimental contributions are predominant, contrasting with the theoretical and methodological contributions self-identified by authors. This highlights a notable discrepancy between actual contributions and authors' self-perceptions, indicating an 'ideal bias'. There is no significant correlation between the overall labor input pattern and the actual contribution pattern of papers, but a positive correlation appears between input and output for specific types of scientific contributions, reflecting a 'more effort, more gain' effect. Different types of DOL input in papers exhibit a notable co-occurrence trend. However, once the paper reaches the dissemination stage, the co-occurrence of different types of actual contributions becomes weaker, indicating that a paper's contributions are often focused on a single type.