How candidates are defined

A topic is listed as a frontier-leadership candidate when three conditions are met:

  • Emerging field — cagr_2018_latest ≥ 5% (global yearly works grew at least 5% per year over the signal window).
  • Arkansas adjacent — the topic appears in researcher topic profiles or in the adjacent_topics of an Arkansas-active topic. Direct top-100 presence counts as the strongest adjacency.
  • Low concentration — top5_share ≤ 20% (no single global elite has consolidated leadership yet).

Candidates are ranked by frontier_score = cagr × (1 − top5_share) × √ar_adjacency_score. Higher score = field is growing fast, leadership is fragmented, and Arkansas is closer to the work.

This is a descriptive surface. It identifies fields where credibly building top-10 leadership is structurally easier than in already-consolidated areas — nothing more. Decisions about where to invest belong to institutional leadership.

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# Topic CAGR Top-5 share AR adjacency Confidence Score