Measuring originality in science
(2020) In Scientometrics 122(1). p.409-427- Abstract
- Originality has self-evident importance for science, but objectively measuring originality poses a formidable challenge. We conceptualise originality as the degree to which a scientific discovery provides subsequent studies with unique knowledge that is not available from previous studies. Accordingly, we operationalise a new measure of originality for individual scientific papers building on the network betweenness centrality concept. Specifically, we measure the originality of a paper based on the directed citation network between its references and the subsequent papers citing it. We demonstrate the validity of this measure using survey information. In particular, we find that the proposed measure is positively correlated with the... (More)
- Originality has self-evident importance for science, but objectively measuring originality poses a formidable challenge. We conceptualise originality as the degree to which a scientific discovery provides subsequent studies with unique knowledge that is not available from previous studies. Accordingly, we operationalise a new measure of originality for individual scientific papers building on the network betweenness centrality concept. Specifically, we measure the originality of a paper based on the directed citation network between its references and the subsequent papers citing it. We demonstrate the validity of this measure using survey information. In particular, we find that the proposed measure is positively correlated with the self-assessed theoretical originality but not with the methodological originality. We also find that originality can be reliably measured with only a small number of subsequent citing papers, which lowers computational cost and contributes to practical utility. The measure also predicts future citations, further confirming its validity. We further characterise the measure to guide its future use. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/80d7f008-5a66-4f9a-b099-38c4526302d1
- author
- Shibayama, Sotaro LU and Wang, Jian
- organization
- publishing date
- 2020-01
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- Scientific originality, Citation network, Network centrality, Novelty
- in
- Scientometrics
- volume
- 122
- issue
- 1
- pages
- 19 pages
- publisher
- Akademiai Kiado
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85075147105
- ISSN
- 1588-2861
- DOI
- 10.1007/s11192-019-03263-0
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 80d7f008-5a66-4f9a-b099-38c4526302d1
- date added to LUP
- 2019-11-24 15:50:56
- date last changed
- 2022-04-18 18:56:29
@article{80d7f008-5a66-4f9a-b099-38c4526302d1,
abstract = {{Originality has self-evident importance for science, but objectively measuring originality poses a formidable challenge. We conceptualise originality as the degree to which a scientific discovery provides subsequent studies with unique knowledge that is not available from previous studies. Accordingly, we operationalise a new measure of originality for individual scientific papers building on the network betweenness centrality concept. Specifically, we measure the originality of a paper based on the directed citation network between its references and the subsequent papers citing it. We demonstrate the validity of this measure using survey information. In particular, we find that the proposed measure is positively correlated with the self-assessed theoretical originality but not with the methodological originality. We also find that originality can be reliably measured with only a small number of subsequent citing papers, which lowers computational cost and contributes to practical utility. The measure also predicts future citations, further confirming its validity. We further characterise the measure to guide its future use.}},
author = {{Shibayama, Sotaro and Wang, Jian}},
issn = {{1588-2861}},
keywords = {{Scientific originality; Citation network; Network centrality; Novelty}},
language = {{eng}},
number = {{1}},
pages = {{409--427}},
publisher = {{Akademiai Kiado}},
series = {{Scientometrics}},
title = {{Measuring originality in science}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11192-019-03263-0}},
doi = {{10.1007/s11192-019-03263-0}},
volume = {{122}},
year = {{2020}},
}