Revolutionary discoveries and the disruption index: Probing the relationship

A few years ago, the Disruption Index (DI) was proposed as a tool for identifying disruptive research. However, it remains unclear whether the index actually measures what it claims to measure. Our proposed survey plans to examine the extent to which the papers identified by the DI as especially disruptive are the same as the papers that scientists working in a field identify as especially disruptive. We, thus, aim to test an assumption about what the DI measures, specifically, that papers with high DI values are papers reporting revolutionary discoveries. We will focus on the field of immunology. Our survey data will be drawn from researchers who have published many papers in immunology.