New scientific ideas at the origin of technological progress

Despite the recognized importance of science for technological progress and economic growth, we still lack a deep understanding of which scientific insights spur technological progress, and through which mechanisms new scientific findings affect both the rate and direction of technological progress. Existing studies exploit large databases of scientific publications and patents, but fully rely on superficial bibliographic information such as citations to identify new scientific ideas. Yet, scientific ideas are embedded in the text of scientific publications, and therefore novel scientific ideas can only be identified through shifts in language. To identify new scientific ideas and assess the novelty of scientific articles, and to trace the effect of these novel scientific ideas and articles on the rate and nature of technological progress, we will develop new natural language processing techniques, harnessing the very rich and mostly unexplored information captured in the text of both publication and patent documents. Doing so will allow us to progress our understanding about the origins and diffusion of new scientific discoveries.

Keywords:scientific novelty, natural language processing, technological progress, scientific publications, patents

Disciplines:Economic development, innovation, technological change and growth not elsewhere classified