What's new about Novelty?

The rise of novelty indicators offers new possibilities for research and innovation policy and practice – they could transform funding allocations, research assessment process, and academic incentive structures. However, it remains unclear what they are measuring and how well they might align with researchers' views of novelty. The Metascience Novelty Indicators Challenge (MetaNIC) will address this by evaluating the effectiveness of several novelty indicators in a challenge prize format. Researchers will test their indicators against a ground truth dataset constructed from expert assessments of novelty in publications. A final prize will be awarded to the indicators that perform best relative to this dataset. While MetaNIC will serve as an early testbed for novelty indicators, it’s essential to create the space for early engagement with the future end-users of indicators – funders, publishers, researchers and higher education providers, and metascience scholars – and explore broader questions around their desirability, acceptability, and impact. Our virtual symposium will provide a deliberative space for this. It will include an overview of approaches to conceptualizing and measuring novelty, followed by structured discussions with UK and global stakeholders on key questions such as: What does an ‘implementable’ novelty indicator tool look like, beyond the minimum viable product stage? What validity and reliability tests should it pass for adopters to feel confident driving decisions based on its outputs? What other systems (e.g., interfaces, training, policies) would end-users require to ensure usability? What impacts should the ecosystem anticipate?