Is low interdisciplinarity of references an unexpected characteristic of Nobel Prize winning research?

In this contribution, we conduct a multi-angular analysis of the interdisciplinarity of Nobel Prize winning research compared to non-Nobel Prize winning articles, based on a large data set. Here interdisciplinarity is measured by the diversity of references, using two true diversity indicators. Articles mentioned by the Nobel Prize committee in Physiology or Medicine (in short: NP articles) awarded during the period from 1900 to 2016 are the focus of our research. These articles are compared with those in a dataset of articles that do not include a Nobel Prize winner among their authors. Moreover, these non-NPs articles were not only published in the same year and in the same research field as the NP ones but were also dealing with the same research topic (such articles are referred to as non-NP articles). The results suggest that the topic-related knowledge included in Nobel Prize winning work is higher than that in non-NPs, hence with lower interdisciplinarity than the latter. Our findings provide useful clues to better understand the characteristics of transformative research, here represented by key publications by Nobel Prize laureates in Physiology or Medicine, and their pattern of knowledge integration.