Novelty and Inequalities in Science

Conference website

Centre for Science, Technology, and Society Studies at the Czech Academy of Sciences invites prospective participants to submit abstracts for presentation at the international research symposium Novelty and Inequalities in Science

Every entry in the scientific record is expected to deliver a novel contribution to the stock of knowledge. Yet, despite its implied omnipresence, novelty has lately emerged as itself a novel research object in the science of science. This shift compels us to examine the social processes driving novelty to the forefront of scientific inquiry, and whether the concept complements or supplants established notions such as priority or originality.

What motivates the current emphasis on novelty? There is an increasing concern that the proportion of truly novel work shrinks despite - or perhaps due to - the exponential growth in scholarly communication. Other explanations point to policy frameworks that prioritize innovation and commercialization, gradually seeping into the research agenda from the outside. But on the inside, the availability of new computational tools and large-scale datasets has also enabled scholars to tackle previously elusive concepts such as novelty. Either way, the question of what counts as novel, and who gets to decide, has acquired fresh urgency.

Upon closer look, novelty remains an ambiguous concept. It oscillates between a property of scientific work determinable ex ante, at the time of publication, and a process of recognition that can only be retraced ex post, susceptible to social prejudice. While novelty is frequently treated as an asset that earns rewards, there are also indications that it acts as a liability subjecting academic careers to penalties from risk aversion. Understanding how funding agencies, peers, and research institutions identify, evaluate, and reward novelty - and whose novel contributions are overlooked - requires a critical interrogation of structural inequalities in the academic field. In this context, the development of algorithmic measures holds the potential to either disentangle novelty from prestige or exacerbate academic audit culture.

The symposium aims to provide a collaborative platform to reflect on the recent attention devoted to novelty research and discuss the relationship between novelty and inequalities in science.

Keynote

Erin Leahey (University of Arizona)
Recognizing, Rewarding, and Promoting Novelty

In this talk, I pose three questions and provide answers based on my collaborative work and the work of my former PhD student, Dr. Jina Lee. How do we recognize original contributions to science? Instead of presuming that the recombination of extant ideas generates new ones, and that novelty is unidimensional, we build on the work of qualitative sociologists to distinguish different types of novelty. How do we reward novelty? We reward it by citing it more, but at least in the natural sciences, women are less likely than men to claim novelty, thereby depressing their citation counts. How do we promote novelty? Although targeted, mission-oriented funding opportunities are critical for steering science into high-priority topic areas, they may be less conducive to novelty relative to unsolicited funding opportunities.

Keynote

Sotaro Shibayama (University of Tokyo)
Heterogeneity and Reproduction of Scientific Novelty

Scientific novelty is unevenly distributed across researchers, yet how such heterogeneity emerges remains elusive. Drawing on my previous work on novelty, I examine early-career training as a key arena in which orientations toward novelty are shaped and transmitted across generations. This talk illustrates how early-career researchers acquire practices such as exploration and risk-taking through mentoring and interactions with senior researchers, with lasting consequences for their capacity to pursue novel work.

Invited talk on Metascience Novelty Indicators Challenge

Sarah Otner (University of Sussex Business School)
Report on the Metascience Novelty Indicators Challenge

Sarah Otner, Principal Investigator of the UKRI-funded Metascience Novelty Indicators Challenge and Founding Director of the Metascience Research Centre at the University of Sussex Business School, will share insights and key findings from the Metascience Novelty Indicators Challenge.

Panel on Novelty in Science Policy, Evaluation, and Funding

Representatives of science policy stakeholders and funders will discuss their institutional perspective on novelty. More details to follow.