  In recent years scholars have built maps of science by connecting the
academic fields that cite each other, are cited together, or that cite a
similar literature. But since scholars cannot always publish in the fields they
cite, or that cite them, these science maps are only rough proxies for the
potential of a scholar, organization, or country, to enter a new academic
field. Here we use a large dataset of scholarly publications disambiguated at
the individual level to create a map of science-or research space-where links
connect pairs of fields based on the probability that an individual has
published in both of them. We find that the research space is a significantly
more accurate predictor of the fields that individuals and organizations will
enter in the future than citation based science maps. At the country level,
however, the research space and citations based science maps are equally
accurate. These findings show that data on career trajectories-the set of
fields that individuals have previously published in-provide more accurate
predictors of future research output for more focalized units-such as
individuals or organizations-than citation based science maps.
