Research on Novelty Measurement Indicator of Academic Papers Based on the Atypical Recombination of Knowledge

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new indicator called Knowledge Eccentricity to measure the novelty of academic papers based on atypical knowledge recombination, validated through empirical analysis of highly cited and zero-cited papers over multiple years.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of Knowledge Eccentricity for timely novelty assessment and analyzes factors influencing research novelty, such as team size and reference count.

Findings

Larger team size negatively impacts paper novelty.

More references positively correlate with increased novelty.

The indicator allows immediate evaluation of a paper's novelty upon publication.

Abstract

The advancement of science is inherently dependent on the recombination of existing knowledge, and innovative research typically relies on the atypical recombination of established knoweldge bases. This study introduces a Knowledge Eccentricity to enable timely assessment of the novelty of research outputs by quantifying their degree of deviation from the existing knowledge system. For empirical analysis, we selected sample data including research articles published in Science and Nature, top 1% highly cited papers, and zero-cited papers for the year 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020, and 2025. We calculated the knowledge eccentricity scores for these papers and examined their potential influencing factors. The results indicate that team size exerts a significant negative effect on paper novelty, meaning larger team size is less conductive to enhancing the novelty of research outputs. Conversely, the number of references shows a signifcant positive correlation with paper novelty, which means that a greater number of references is associated with a moderate imporovement in a paper's novelty. The proposed indicator offers strong timeliness and operability, allowing for the evaluation of a paper's novelty immediately upon its publication.