scientific impact
How to Find Fantastic AI Papers: Self-Rankings as a Powerful Predictor of Scientific Impact Beyond Peer Review
Su, Buxin, Collina, Natalie, Wen, Garrett, Li, Didong, Cho, Kyunghyun, Fan, Jianqing, Zhao, Bingxin, Su, Weijie
Peer review in academic research aims not only to ensure factual correctness but also to identify work of high scientific potential that can shape future research directions. This task is especially critical in fast-moving fields such as artificial intelligence (AI), yet it has become increasingly difficult given the rapid growth of submissions. In this paper, we investigate an underexplored measure for identifying high-impact research: authors' own rankings of their multiple submissions to the same AI conference. Grounded in game-theoretic reasoning, we hypothesize that self-rankings are informative because authors possess unique understanding of their work's conceptual depth and long-term promise. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a large-scale experiment at a leading AI conference, where 1,342 researchers self-ranked their 2,592 submissions by perceived quality. Tracking outcomes over more than a year, we found that papers ranked highest by their authors received twice as many citations as their lowest-ranked counterparts; self-rankings were especially effective at identifying highly cited papers (those with over 150 citations). Moreover, we showed that self-rankings outperformed peer review scores in predicting future citation counts. Our results remained robust after accounting for confounders such as preprint posting time and self-citations. Together, these findings demonstrate that authors' self-rankings provide a reliable and valuable complement to peer review for identifying and elevating high-impact research in AI.
Novelty and Impact of Economics Papers
We propose a framework that recasts scientific novelty not as a single attribute of a paper, but as a reflection of its position within the evolving intellectual landscape. We decompose this position into two orthogonal dimensions: \textit{spatial novelty}, which measures a paper's intellectual distinctiveness from its neighbors, and \textit{temporal novelty}, which captures its engagement with a dynamic research frontier. To operationalize these concepts, we leverage Large Language Models to develop semantic isolation metrics that quantify a paper's location relative to the full-text literature. Applying this framework to a large corpus of economics articles, we uncover a fundamental trade-off: these two dimensions predict systematically different outcomes. Temporal novelty primarily predicts citation counts, whereas spatial novelty predicts disruptive impact. This distinction allows us to construct a typology of semantic neighborhoods, identifying four archetypes associated with distinct and predictable impact profiles. Our findings demonstrate that novelty can be understood as a multidimensional construct whose different forms, reflecting a paper's strategic location, have measurable and fundamentally distinct consequences for scientific progress.
Graphics4Science: Computer Graphics for Scientific Impacts
Chen, Peter Yichen, Guo, Minghao, Pfister, Hanspeter, Lin, Ming, Freeman, William, Huang, Qixing, Shen, Han-Wei, Matusik, Wojciech
Computer graphics, often associated with films, games, and visual effects, has long been a powerful tool for addressing scientific challenges--from its origins in 3D visualization for medical imaging to its role in modern computational modeling and simulation. This course explores the deep and evolving relationship between computer graphics and science, highlighting past achievements, ongoing contributions, and open questions that remain. We show how core methods, such as geometric reasoning and physical modeling, provide inductive biases that help address challenges in both fields, especially in data-scarce settings. To that end, we aim to reframe graphics as a modeling language for science by bridging vocabulary gaps between the two communities. Designed for both newcomers and experts, Graphics4Science invites the graphics community to engage with science, tackle high-impact problems where graphics expertise can make a difference, and contribute to the future of scientific discovery. Additional details are available on the course website: https://graphics4science.github.io
In-depth Research Impact Summarization through Fine-Grained Temporal Citation Analysis
Arnaout, Hiba, Sternlicht, Noy, Hope, Tom, Gurevych, Iryna
Understanding the impact of scientific publications is crucial for identifying breakthroughs and guiding future research. Traditional metrics based on citation counts often miss the nuanced ways a paper contributes to its field. In this work, we propose a new task: generating nuanced, expressive, and time-aware impact summaries that capture both praise (confirmation citations) and critique (correction citations) through the evolution of fine-grained citation intents. We introduce an evaluation framework tailored to this task, showing moderate to strong human correlation on subjective metrics such as insightfulness. Expert feedback from professors reveals a strong interest in these summaries and suggests future improvements.
Scientific Impact of Graph-Based Approaches in Deep Learning Studies -- A Bibliometric Comparison
Turker, Ilker, Tan, Serhat Orkun
Applying graph-based approaches in deep learning receives more attention over time. This study presents statistical analysis on the use of graph-based approaches in deep learning and examines the scientific impact of the related articles. Processing the data obtained from the Web of Science database, metrics such as the type of the articles, funding availability, indexing type, annual average number of citations and the number of access were analyzed to quantitatively reveal the effects on the scientific audience. It's outlined that deep learning-based studies gained momentum after year 2013, and the rate of graph-based approaches in all deep learning studies increased linearly from 1% to 4% within the following 10 years. Conference publications scanned in the Conference Proceeding Citation Index (CPCI) on the graph-based approaches receive significantly more citations. The citation counts of the SCI-Expanded and Emerging SCI indexed publications of the two streams are close to each other. While the citation performances of the supported and unsupported publications of the two sides were similar, pure deep learning studies received more citations on the journal publication side and graph-based approaches received more citations on the conference side. Despite their similar performance in recent years, graph-based studies show twice more citation performance as they get older, compared to traditional approaches. Annual average citation performance per article for all deep learning studies is 11.051 in 2014, while it is 22.483 for graph-based studies. Also, despite receiving 16% more access, graph-based papers get almost the same overall citation over time with the pure counterpart. This is an indication that graph-based approaches need a greater bunch of attention to follow, while pure deep learning counterpart is relatively simpler to get inside.
Machine Learning vs. Deep Learning in 5G Networks -- A Comparison of Scientific Impact
Turker, Ilker, Tan, Serhat Orkun
Introduction of fifth generation (5G) wireless network technology has matched the crucial need for high capacity and speed needs of the new generation mobile applications. Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) also empowered 5G cellular networks with two mainstreams as machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) techniques. Our study aims to uncover the differences in scientific impact for these two techniques by the means of statistical bibliometrics. The performed analysis includes citation performance with respect to indexing types, funding availability, journal or conference publishing options together with distributions of these metrics along years to evaluate the popularity trends in a detailed manner. Web of Science (WoS) database host 2245 papers for ML and 1407 papers for DL-related studies. DL studies, starting with 9% rate in 2013, has reached to 45% rate in 2022 among all DL and ML-related studies. Results related to scientific impact indicate that DL studies get slightly more average normalized citation (2.256) compared to ML studies (2.118) in 5G, while SCI-Expanded indexed papers in both sides tend to have similar citation performance (3.165 and 3.162 respectively). ML-related studies those are indexed in ESCI show twice citation performance compared to DL. Conference papers in DL domain and journal papers in ML domain are superior in scientific interest to their counterparts with minor differences. Highest citation performance for ML studies is achieved for year 2014, while this peak is observed for 2017 for DL studies. We can conclude that both publication and citation rate for DL-related papers tend to increase and outperform ML-based studies in 5G domain by the means of citation metrics.
Detecting Emerging Technologies in Artificial Intelligence Scientific Ecosystem Using an Indicator-based Model
Ghaemmaghami, Ali, Schiffauerova, Andrea, Ebadi, Ashkan
Early identification of emergent topics is of eminent importance due to their potential impacts on society. There are many methods for detecting emerging terms and topics, all with advantages and drawbacks. However, there is no consensus about the attributes and indicators of emergence. In this study, we evaluate emerging topic detection in the field of artificial intelligence using a new method to evaluate emergence. We also introduce two new attributes of collaboration and technological impact which can help us use both paper and patent information simultaneously. Our results confirm that the proposed new method can successfully identify the emerging topics in the period of the study. Moreover, this new method can provide us with the score of each attribute and a final emergence score, which enable us to rank the emerging topics with their emergence scores and each attribute score.
A Graph Convolutional Neural Network based Framework for Estimating Future Citations Count of Research Articles
Wahid, Abdul, Sharma, Rajesh, Annavarapu, Chandra Sekhara Rao
Scientific publications play a vital role in the career of a researcher. However, some articles become more popular than others among the research community and subsequently drive future research directions. One of the indicative signs of popular articles is the number of citations an article receives. The citation count, which is also the basis with various other metrics, such as the journal impact factor score, the $h$-index, is an essential measure for assessing a scientific paper's quality. In this work, we proposed a Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) based framework for estimating future research publication citations for both the short-term (1-year) and long-term (for 5-years and 10-years) duration. We have tested our proposed approach over the AMiner dataset, specifically on research articles from the computer science domain, consisting of more than 0.8 million articles.
What Can the Maker Movement Teach Us About the Digitization of Creativity?
In recent years, the'maker movement' has emerged as a social phenomenon driven by novel technological possibilities.1 With the help of inexpensive, yet highly versatile means of production (for example, CNC milling machines, 3D printers) and easy-to-use software tools, makers free themselves from their traditional role as passive consumers and evolve into innovators and producers. Although the act of physical production seems to be at the center of the movement, a large part of the creative work takes place in the online sphere. These digital activities and their outcomes provide a rich source of information that can be used to gain a more nuanced understanding of how the digitization affects the creative process itself. Of all the production methods available to makers, 3D printing is probably the most versatile and requires only a limited understanding of the production process. Several 3D design software packages allow even lay people to turn their ideas into printable designs.
Attention: to Better Stand on the Shoulders of Giants
Yuan, Sha, Shao, Zhou, Zhang, Yu, Wei, Xingxing, Xiao, Tong, Wang, Yifan, Tang, Jie
Science of science (SciSci) is an emerging discipline wherein science is used to study the structure and evolution of science itself using large data sets. The increasing availability of digital data on scholarly outcomes offers unprecedented opportunities to explore SciSci. In the progress of science, the previously discovered knowledge principally inspires new scientific ideas, and citation is a reasonably good reflection of this cumulative nature of scientific research. The researches that choose potentially influential references will have a lead over the emerging publications. Although the peer review process is the mainly reliable way of predicting a paper's future impact, the ability to foresee the lasting impact based on citation records is increasingly essential in the scientific impact analysis in the era of big data. This paper develops an attention mechanism for the long-term scientific impact prediction and validates the method based on a real large-scale citation data set. The results break conventional thinking. Instead of accurately simulating the original power-law distribution, emphasizing the limited attention can better stand on the shoulders of giants.