  Do scientists follow hot topics in their scientific investigations? In this
paper, by performing analysis to papers published in the American Physical
Society (APS) Physical Review journals, it is found that papers are more likely
to be attracted by hot fields, where the hotness of a field is measured by the
number of papers belonging to the field. This indicates that scientists
generally do follow hot topics. However, there are qualitative differences
among scientists from various countries, among research works regarding
different number of authors, different number of affiliations and different
number of references. These observations could be valuable for policy makers
when deciding research funding and also for individual researchers when
searching for scientific projects.
