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bioRxiv · 10.1101/2020.10.08.330696

The impact of preprint servers in the formation of novel ideas

Satish, S.·Yao, Z.·Drozdov, A.·Veytsman, B.
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Abstract

We study whether novel ideas in biomedical literature appear first in preprints or traditional journals. We develop a Bayesian method to estimate the time of appearance for a phrase in the literature, and apply it to a number of phrases, both automatically extracted and suggested by experts. We see that presently most phrases appear first in the traditional journals, but there is a number of phrases with the first appearance on preprint servers. A comparison of the general composition of texts from bioRxiv and traditional journals shows a growing trend of bioRxiv being predictive of traditional journals. We discuss the application of the method for related problems.

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Satish, S., Yao, Z., Drozdov, A., Veytsman, B.. 2020-10-08. The impact of preprint servers in the formation of novel ideas. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.08.330696

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