Work in progress

[Data] [Paper coming soon]

How has the rate of scientific progress changed over time? I develop a new measure of novelty in academic publications based on semantic analysis of abstracts using natural language processing techniques. I find that more novel papers are more likely to be highly cited and cited by patents. Using this measure, I find that novelty in academic publications has been declining steadily since the 1960s, across all fields of study. More worryingly, the novelty of the most influential research has been declining even faster. Patents are also citing older research more frequently. This suggests that the rate of scientific progress may be slowing down. I propose avenues for future work to investigate the causes and consequences of declining novelty in science.