Scientific collaboration, research funding, and novelty in scientific knowledge

Abstract

Disruptive advancements in science and technology often rely on new ideas and findings, which in turn brings us to focus on the value of novelty in scholarly activities. Using Web of Science publication data from European regions for the period between 2008 and 2017, this study examines, first, the impact of scientific collaboration on novelty of research. Here, five levels of collaboration are considered for each article–country, three levels of regions, and institutions, and novelty is measured with keywords information. Second, we investigate both the effect and moderating effect of research funding on novelty. Our findings show that there is a negative and significant relationship between scientific collaboration and novelty. Furthermore, funded papers show lower novelty than the unfunded, but funding does have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between collaboration and novelty. This study contributes by linking diverse levels of collaboration and funding sources to article’s novelty and thus extending the scope of bibliometric research of publications.