Are researchers following trends in the topics they research or write about? It seems to be the case, if we look at this new research. From the conclusion:

“We have found that in the tested fields of science for papers published by the APS physical review journals, hot fields attract more newly published papers; however, scientific works are not as hotness-driven compared with other fields. Among the major countries, this phenomenon of tracing hotness occurs more in China compared with other countries, which could be related to the fact that China is still a developing country in terms of scientific research. We also found that papers with more authors, more affiliations and more references were on subjects that were more hotness-driven. This observation could potentially be valuable to policy makers that fund scientific projects.”

Abstract of the research that can be read online:

Do scientists follow hot topics in their scientific investigations? In this paper, by performing analysis to papers published in the American Physical Society (APS) Physical Review journals, it is found that papers are more likely to be attracted by hot fields, where the hotness of a field is measured by the number of papers belonging to the field. This indicates that scientists generally do follow hot topics. However, there are qualitative differences among scientists from various countries, among research works regarding different number of authors, different number of affiliations and different number of references. These observations could be valuable for policy makers when deciding research funding and also for individual researchers when searching for scientific projects.