Novelty in Science: The Impact of French Physicists' Novel Articles

Jacques Mairesse and Michele Pezzoni

No 2018-23, GREDEG Working Papers from Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of publishing an article introducing a novel scientific idea and the impact of follower articles reusing that idea. We develop an indicator of novelty based on the appearance of an unprecedented combination of referenced journals in an article bibliography. We define novel articles as those including a novel combination of referenced journals the first year it appears, while we define follower articles those reusing the novel combination within five years since its appearance. We conduct our study on the articles published, between 2005 and 2009, by all the French physicists active in 2005 in public universities and at CNRS. We find that novel and follower articles receive the same number of citations (calculated in a 5-year window) as non-novel articles, although they are published in journals with lower impact factor. When we distinguish between citations received in the short and long run, we find that novel and follower articles benefit of a citation premium in the long run, i.e. 3-4 years after their publication.

Pages: 13 pages
Date: 2018-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-sog
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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