Scholars play a crucial role in driving scientific innovation and progress. However, existing methods for evaluating scholars’ academic influence have limitations in capturing their innovation contributions, especially in emerging interdisciplinary fields characterized by rapid development. Therefore, we propose a method for evaluating scholars’ influence based on their scientific innovation roles. Taking the blockchain field as an example, we first define four innovation roles for academic papers based on their citation relationships within the field. We then map these roles onto individual scholars using a paper-author correspondence. A sliding time window analysis captures the dynamic evolution of scholars’ roles over different periods. The results reveal insightful role transitions of scholars over time and their diverse influences across topics, providing a more comprehensive perspective on their research contributions. Through case analysis and comparative analysis with traditional metrics, we validate the effectiveness of our method in identifying influential scholars, emerging innovators, and interdisciplinary contributors.