This paper investigates the relationship between scientists' cognitive profile and their ability to generate innovative ideas and gain scientific recognition. We propose a novel author-level metric based on the semantic representation of researchers' past publications to measure cognitive diversity both at individual and team levels. Using PubMed Knowledge Graph (PKG), we analyze the impact of cognitive diversity on novelty, as measured by combinatorial novelty indicators and peer labels on Faculty Opinion. We assessed scientific impact through citations and disruption indicators. We show that the presence of exploratory individuals (i.e., cognitively diverse) is beneficial in generating distant knowledge combinations, but only when balanced by a significant proportion of exploitative individuals (i.e., cognitively specialized). Furthermore, teams with a high proportion of exploitative profiles tend to consolidate science, whereas those with a significant share of both profiles tend to disrupt it. Cognitive diversity between team members appears to be always beneficial to combining more distant knowledge. However, to maximize the relevance of these distant combinations of knowledge, maintaining a limited number of exploratory individuals is essential, as exploitative individuals must question and debate their novel perspectives. These specialized individuals are the most qualified to extract the full potential of novel ideas and integrate them within the existing scientific paradigm.

翻译：本文探究科学家的认知特征与其产生创新思想及获得科学认可之间的关系。我们基于研究者过往论文的语义表征，提出一种新型作者层面指标，用于衡量个体与团队层面的认知多样性。利用PubMed知识图谱（PubMed Knowledge Graph, PKG），我们通过组合新颖性指标及《教师观点》（Faculty Opinion）中的同行评价标签，分析认知多样性对新颖性的影响，并借助引用次数与颠覆性指标评估科学影响力。研究发现：探索型个体（即认知多样性丰富者）有助于产生远距离知识组合，但仅当与相当比例的使用型个体（即认知专精者）保持平衡时才能发挥效用。此外，高比例使用型特征的团队倾向于巩固现有科学体系，而兼具两种特征的团队则更可能颠覆现有范式。团队成员间的认知多样性始终有利于整合更远距离的知识，但为最大化这些远距离知识组合的相关性，必须严格控制探索型个体数量——唯有通过使用型个体对这些新颖视角的质疑与辩论，才能充分挖掘其潜在价值。这些专精型研究者最能将创新思想转化为实际效用，并将其融入现有科学范式。