The Impact of Novelty in Scientific Articles: The Case of French Physicists

Jacques Mairesse and Michele Pezzoni

Revue d'économie industrielle, 2021, vol. n° 174, issue 2, 325-357

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of publishing an article introducing a novel scientific idea and the impact of follower articles reusing that idea. To do so, we develop an indicator of novelty based on the appearance of an unprecedented combination of referenced journals in an article?s bibliography. We define novel articles as those including a novel combination of referenced journals within the first year of its appearance, while we define follower articles as those reusing the novel combination in the four years after its appearance. We assess the impact of novel and follower articles for a sample of 8,896 articles published between 2005 and 2009 by 1,087 French physicists. We find that novel and follower articles benefit from a citation premium only in the long run, i.e., three to four years after their publication, while in the short run, they receive the same citations as regular articles. We also find that both novel and follower articles are published in journals with a lower impact factor than the journals in which regular articles are published. JEL classification: I23, O31.

Keywords: novelty in science; knowledge recombination; citation impact; journal impact factor; French physicists (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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