Abstract
The increasing complexity of modern scientific challenges has led to extensive collaboration within Big Science. This study introduces co-utilization – a novel type of collaboration in which researchers leverage multiple global big science facilities (BSFs) to science advance. By analyzing 245,984 publications from 40 BSFs, we identify 23,046 publications that utilized multiple facilities, revealing an uneven global distribution influenced by user demand for diverse technologies and geographical constraints. Our findings indicate that co-utilization is associated with lower disruptive potential but enhances scientific impact. Through a comprehensive analysis of five key factors, we find that diversity in knowledge contributes, while technological diversity might undermine the disruption. Specifically, inter-community collaboration, international co-utilization, and low knowledge similarity positively influence disruption, while cross-energy co-utilization has a slightly negative effect. Additionally, we uncover that past co-utilization times negatively while time span of co-utilizations positively associated with disruption, suggesting that both the establishment of new networks and the maintenance of long-term collaborations are crucial. The U-shaped impacts of knowledge similarity on disruption are also discussed and the low- or high-level similarity might describe different mechanisms. These findings provide valuable insights for facility managers, policymakers, and funding agencies, emphasizing the need to support strategic co-utilization networks and promote knowledge-diverse collaboration. By shedding light on this emerging collaboration model, our study contributes to the ongoing exploration of scientific disruption and Big Science governance.
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Data availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the [Mingze Zhang] repository, [https://github.com/zhangmingze-ss/BigScienceFacilityCo-utilization]. The data of Openalex could be accessed at: [https://docs.openalex.org/].
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund Major Projects of China (Project No. 22&ZD127). We would like to thank Chang Gao, Yuhui Dong, and Honghong Li for their expertise and assistances with the basic knowledge of big science facilities and valuable comments from reviewers.
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MZ contributed to data collection and analyses, study design and investigation, and wrote the draft. LW contributed to conceptualization and revised the draft. LZ contributed to revise the draft. ZL contributed to validation, administrated the research project, and provided the research funding. All authors reviewed the manuscript.
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ZHANG, M., WANG, L., ZHANG, L. et al. Co-utilizing global big science facilities: a novel type collaboration and the impacts on scientific disruption. Humanit Soc Sci Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06992-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-06992-9
