Beyond citations: Measuring novel scientific ideas and their impact in publication text

Samuel Arts, Nicola Melluso and Reinhilde Veugelers

No 757417, Working Papers of Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation, Leuven from KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), Department of Management, Strategy and Innovation, Leuven

Abstract: New scientific ideas drive progress, yet measuring scientific novelty remains challenging. We use natural language processing to detect the origin and impact of new ideas in scientific publications. To validate our methods, we analyze Nobel Prize-winning papers, which likely pioneered impactful new ideas, and literature review papers, which typically consolidate existing knowledge. We also show that novel papers have more intellectual neighbors published after them, indicating they are ahead of their intellectual peers. Finally, papers introducing new ideas, particularly those with greater follow-on reuse, attract more citations.

Keywords: natural language processing; science; novelty; impact; breakthrough; Nobel; OpenAlex (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20
Date: 2025-01-13
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big, nep-ino, nep-sog and nep-tid
Note: paper number MSI_2502
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Published in FEB Research Report MSI_2502, pages 1-20

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https://lirias.kuleuven.be/retrieve/793758 Published version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Beyond Citations: Measuring Novel Scientific Ideas and their Impact in Publication Text (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ete:msiper:757417

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