Originality in scientific titles and abstracts can predict citation count

Abstract

In this research-in-progress paper, we apply a computational measure correlating with originality from creativity science: Divergent Semantic Integration (DSI), to a selection of 99,557 scientific abstracts and titles selected from the Web of Science. We observe statistically significant differences in DSI between subject and field of research, and a slight rise in DSI over time. We model the base 10 logarithm of the citation count after 5 years with DSI and find a statistically significant positive correlation in all fields of research with an adjusted $R^2$ of 0.13.

6 pages, 3 figures, submitted to ISSI 2025, research in progress paper