Science sentences to ponder: citations vs. innovations

We demonstrate empirically that measures of novelty are correlated with but distinct from measures of scientific impact, which suggests that if also novelty metrics were utilized in scientist evaluation, scientists might pursue more innovative, riskier, projects.

That is from Jay Bhattacharya and Mikko Packalen in a new NBER working paper and scientific innovation and stagnation.

They point out that Eugene Garfield, the scientist behind the development of citation count, did not think it should be used to evaluate individual scientists.  Overall, citations encourage too much work in crowded, “approaching peak” areas, rather than developing new ideas.  In lieu of citations, the authors suggest using textual analysis to determine how much a paper is building on new ideas rather than on already intensively explored ideas.

Recommended.

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