Science Utopia? Closed-Loop LLM Simulation of Academic Research Ecosystems

Yiqiao Jin; Yiyang Wang; Lucheng Fu; Bing He; Siheng Xiong; Yijia Xiao; B. Aditya Prakash; Josiah Hester; Srijan Kumar; James Evans; Jindong Wang

arXiv · 2610.01257

Science Utopia? Closed-Loop LLM Simulation of Academic Research Ecosystems

Yiqiao Jin·Yiyang Wang·Lucheng Fu·Bing He·Siheng Xiong·Yijia Xiao·B. Aditya Prakash·Josiah Hester·Srijan Kumar·James Evans·Jindong Wang

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Abstract

Scientific progress emerges from a longitudinal ecosystem in which researchers, institutions, funding agencies, collaboration networks, and the scientific literature co-evolve. As AI becomes increasingly involved throughout the scientific research cycle, understanding these interconnected and evolving processes becomes increasingly important. We introduce SciUtopia, a persistent, closed-loop LLM-agent simulation framework for studying academic research ecosystems. SciUtopia models interconnected scientific processes such as research-direction choice, collaboration, submission, peer review, resubmission, citation, funding, and researcher attrition, while maintaining evolving states across simulated years. Its configurable institutional mechanisms and information channels provide a controlled testbed for matched counterfactual experiments and targeted interventions. Across 61 simulation worlds, SciUtopia simulates over 40,000 researchers from 8,000 institutions, producing around 400,000 publication decisions and 1.2 million LLM-generated peer reviews. Using these longitudinal simulations, we find that rejection-driven resubmission substantially amplifies reviewer burden beyond population growth alone, cautious exploration balances citation impact with career success and long-term topic diversity, and resource inequality can emerge even without detectable cumulative advantage from narrowly winning early funding. Code is available at https://github.com/Ahren09/ScienceUtopia.

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Yiqiao Jin, Yiyang Wang, Lucheng Fu, Bing He, Siheng Xiong, Yijia Xiao, B. Aditya Prakash, Josiah Hester, Srijan Kumar, James Evans, Jindong Wang. 2026-10-01. Science Utopia? Closed-Loop LLM Simulation of Academic Research Ecosystems. https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.01257

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