The Right Job and the Job Right: Novelty, Impact and Journal Stratification in Science


Dr. Nicolas Carayol, University of Bordeaux

Though Science is traditionally associated with creative behavior, concerns have been raised on its professional procedures being sufficiently open to innovative research. Thanks to a new measurement of novelty based on the frequencies of pairwise combinations of article keywords calculated on the set of all research articles published from 1999 to 2013 in the journals referenced by the WoS (more than ten million papers), we find no evidence of shrinking novelty in science over that period. Novel contributions are more often performed in larger teams that span more institutional boundaries and geographic areas. High novelty increases citations by more than forty percent and the odds of a “big hit” by about fifty percent. High novelty simultaneously reduces citational risk conditioned on being published to a large extent because it raises the odds that the problem remains active in the future. As we document novel papers match preferentially with top journals (even controlling for journal quality), the risk induced by novel research is more likely to materialize through the publication process.



About the speaker

Nicolas Carayol is PhD from University of Toulouse, and professor of economics at the University of Bordeaux since 2008. He conducts research on the field of the economics of science and innovation and on the economics of networks. He recently worked on the formation of inventor networks and on how these professional networks affect local innovation and productivity. He currently coordinates several research projects aiming at identifying the impacts of the different forms of science policies (project funding, excellence programs, tech transfer...).
 



Venue: Conference room (0.16 & 0.17)

Date: 04 October 2018

Time: 12:00 - 13:00  CEST


UNU-MERIT