Scientific Creativity Patterns in Scholars’ Academic Careers: Evidence from PubMed

••Dynamic time warping and K-medoids were employed to discover the scientific creativity patterns of scholars.•The flat and the peak pattern were identified as the overall scientific creativity patterns of scholars.•Most scholars (83%) demonstrated a flat pattern in their careers, and only a minority (17%) showed a peak pattern in scientific creativity.•A small portion of female scholars (6%) achieved their creative accomplishments in the early stage of their careers.•Scholars who graduated from top-tier universities are more likely to achieve high levels of scientific creativity compared to those who graduated from mid-tier or low-tier universities. Scientific creativity is a key aspect of scientific advancement and academic career success. This study investigated the patterns of scholars’ scientific creativity, represented by the evolution of the disruption index (D index) of the scholars’ papers throughout their careers. We constructed a time-series dataset of 10,049 scholars with 779,190 corresponding articles published from 1965 to 2015. The dynamic time warping algorithm and the K-medoids were used to identify two overall scientific creativity patterns: “flat” and “peak.” The “peak” pattern was further identified as four sub-clusters: “high peak,” “moderate peak,” “low peak,” and “early peak.” The findings showed that both male and female scholars exhibited the “high peak” pattern, with a small number of females showing the “early peak” pattern in their careers. In addition, scholars from top-tier universities showed the “high peak” and “early peak” patterns in their careers, while scholars from mid-tier or low-tier universities displayed the “early peak” and “flat” patterns. Our findings enrich the typology of scientific creativity patterns and provide a basis for policymakers to establish and improve performance evaluation systems.