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Breakthrough recognition: Bias against novelty and competition for attention

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  • Chai, Sen
  • Menon, Anoop

Abstract

Adding to the literature on the recognition and spread of ideas, and alongside the bias against novelty view documented in prior research, we introduce the perspective that articles compete for the attention of researchers who might build upon them. We investigate this effect by analyzing more than 5.3 million research publications from 1970 to 1999 in the life sciences. In support of our competition for attention perspective, we show that articles covering rarely addressed topics tend to receive more citations and have a higher chance of being breakthrough papers as compared to articles on more popular topics. We also explore conditions under which these effects might vary by using decade subsamples, home- versus foreign-field forward citations, as well as short-, medium- and long-term time windows. Finally, we also find evidence consistent with the previously documented bias against novelty and show that both mechanisms can work simultaneously.

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  • Chai, Sen & Menon, Anoop, 2019. "Breakthrough recognition: Bias against novelty and competition for attention," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 733-747.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:respol:v:48:y:2019:i:3:p:733-747
    DOI: 10.1016/j.respol.2018.11.006
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    5. Sam Arts & Nicola Melluso & Reinhilde Veugelers, 2023. "Beyond Citations: Measuring Novel Scientific Ideas and their Impact in Publication Text," Papers 2309.16437, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2024.
    6. Conor O’Kane & Jing A. Zhang & Jarrod Haar & James A. Cunningham, 2023. "How scientists interpret and address funding criteria: value creation and undesirable side effects," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 799-826, August.
    7. Zhentao Liang & Jin Mao & Gang Li, 2023. "Bias against scientific novelty: A prepublication perspective," Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 74(1), pages 99-114, January.
    8. Md. Yahin Hossain & Zhiqiang Liu & Nilesh Kumar, 2020. "How does self-performance expectation foster breakthrough creativity in the employee's cognitive level? An application of self-fulfilling prophecy," International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478), Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 9(5), pages 116-128, September.
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