Scholarly Dynamics

We map how ideas propagate through scholarship, revealing the structure, dynamics, and inequalities of the global research ecosystem.

We are rethinking how scientific knowledge is organized, measured, and discovered. Rather than reducing scholarship to a single metric, we study science as a complex network of ideas, fields, and researcher trajectories. This perspective allows us to capture the nuanced ways in which knowledge evolves, spreads, and shapes future work.

Examples of this work include the Research Space, a map of the scientific landscape constructed from the career movements of researchers across fields, and Rankless, a platform reimagining how scientific impact can be evaluated and explored.

Together, these projects form a unified agenda to move beyond simplistic metrics and develop tools that reflect the richness and diversity of scientific activity. They also demonstrate how machine learning, network analysis, and open data can deepen our understanding of academic ecosystems.

For researchers and students, the Center for Collective Learning provides a setting where the study of science itself becomes a scientific endeavor—analyzing how knowledge is produced, how it spreads, and how we might design better systems for recognizing and supporting impactful work.

Rankless

Rankless was developed by Endre Borza, an economist working as a data engineer at CCL. The graphic and interaction design of Rankless is the work of Máté Barkóczi (MOME) who interned at CCL. Vera Hamar, Executive Director of CCL, supported Rankless as a project manager and coordinator. César A. Hidalgo, Director of CCL, supervised the project.

Since its release in 2024, the platform has undergone several iterations and updates, and it has been expanded with new features. You can now explore the impact of individuals, countries, and even journals through a range of informative data-visualization tools.

In 2025, Rankless was nominated for a Webby Award in the category Websites&mobile sites - Science.

Related Papers

4.-EARLY CAREER WINS AND TOURNAMENT PRESTIGE CHARACTERIZE TENNIS PLAYERS’ TRAJECTORIES
Chiara Zappalà, Sandro Sousa, Tiago Cunha, Alessandro Pluchino, Andrea Rapisarda & Roberta Sinatra
EPJ Data Science (2024)
Published Version (PDF)

3.-ACADEMIC MOBILITY AS A DRIVER OF PRODUCTIVITY: A GENDER-CENTRIC APPROACH. IN INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON COMPLEX NETWORKS
Macedo, M., Jaramillo, A. M., & Menezes, R.
International Workshop on Complex Networks 2023
Published Version (PDF)

2.- MEET ME IN THE MIDDLE: THE REUNIFICATION OF GERMANY'S RESEARCH NETWORK
BOGANG JUN, FLAVIO L. PINHEIRO , TOBIAS BUCHMAN, SEUNG-KYU YID, CESAR A. HIDALGO
Pre-Print (2017)

1. THE RESEARCH SPACE: USING CAREER PATHS TO PREDICT THE EVOLUTION OF THE RESEARCH OUTPUT OF INDIVIDUALS, INSTITUTIONS, AND NATIONS
MIGUEL GUEVARA, DOMINIK HARTMANN, MANUEL ARISTARAN, MARCELO MENDOZA, CÉSAR A. HIDALGO
Scientometrics, Volume 109, Issue 3, pp 1695–1709 (2016)
Published Version (PD