One common advice on research is to have a coherent theme among our papers. I heard this from a bigwig around 2003 after getting my PhD.
This is one of these advices that I agree in principle but have violated in practice.
=D
Yes, coherence can help recognition from the community, especially when one enters a new field.
However, I am not sure if this should be intentionally aimed for. Unless you are extremely smart and versatile, you are likely end up doing related stuff without even trying.
There is this implicit force that drags us towards similar, and thus incremental, ideas. We should fight against this force, not follow it.
So, just do whatever you like. You will have more fun and more likely to produce novel stuff which, even if lacks coherence, beats being incremental.
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