I think the advice is to have a science city and a gold city.
Science city has Oxford, an academy, and all the science buildings. It works cottages or other high commerce tiles, is preferably on the coast for better trade routes, and turns excess citizens into scientists. Settle Great Scientists here.
Your gold city has one (or more) shrines preferably, and builds gold multiplier buildings before science buildings (it can get those too though). Wall Street will go here and corporations will be founded here too. Excess citizens are turned into merchants. It's good to settle Great Prophets here (+2H +5G) after making shrines. Always settle Great Merchants (+1F +6G) here too (if you don't need the immediate cash from a trade mission). Running merchant specialists with high food is normally a good plan rather than working all cottages I find since they don't depend on the science slider, so you want food. Production is good for this city too. I like a mix of mines and farms normally.
The science city can produce gold too and the gold city can produce science depending upon how high the slider is.
