Signal Scientific exploration, collaboration and labor division in the large language model era

Summary

In a preprint submitted 23 July 2026 (arXiv:2607.20923), authors Xiang Zheng, Xi Hong, Jialin Liu and Chaoqun Ni analyzed publication and collaboration networks for 775,323 scientists using PubMed Central full text combined with OpenAlex publication and collaboration histories. They additionally examined CRediT contribution statements from 137,120 multi-author papers. Since 2022, researchers increasingly published across more intellectually distant fields and entered fields in which they had not previously worked, with the effect especially pronounced among established scientists and scientists from non-English-speaking low- and middle-income countries. Collaboration networks became more interdisciplinary over the same period. Contributors on papers published after 2022 reported narrower individual role sets on average, with increased software and validation roles but decreased conceptual and management roles, while role assignment fluidity increased. The paper is classified under cs.DL, cs.AI and cs.CY and runs to 21 pages of main text with 4 figures, plus 25 pages of supplementary material with 13 figures and 4 tables.