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Main Authors: Yan, Zhengxu, Li, Han, Feng, Yuming
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.14738
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author Yan, Zhengxu
Li, Han
Feng, Yuming
author_facet Yan, Zhengxu
Li, Han
Feng, Yuming
contents The accelerating pace of scientific publication makes it difficult to identify truly original research among incremental work. We propose a framework for estimating the conceptual novelty of research papers by combining semantic representation learning with retrieval-based comparison against prior literature. We model novelty as both a binary classification task (novel vs. non-novel) and a pairwise ranking task (comparative novelty), enabling absolute and relative assessments. Experiments benchmark three model scales, ranging from compact domain-specific encoders to a zero-shot frontier model. Results show that fine-tuned lightweight models outperform larger zero-shot models despite their smaller parameter count, indicating that task-specific supervision matters more than scale for conceptual novelty estimation. We further deploy the best-performing model as an online system for public interaction and real-time novelty scoring.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_14738
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle NoveltyRank: A Retrieval-Augmented Framework for Conceptual Novelty Estimation in AI Research
Yan, Zhengxu
Li, Han
Feng, Yuming
Machine Learning
Computation and Language
The accelerating pace of scientific publication makes it difficult to identify truly original research among incremental work. We propose a framework for estimating the conceptual novelty of research papers by combining semantic representation learning with retrieval-based comparison against prior literature. We model novelty as both a binary classification task (novel vs. non-novel) and a pairwise ranking task (comparative novelty), enabling absolute and relative assessments. Experiments benchmark three model scales, ranging from compact domain-specific encoders to a zero-shot frontier model. Results show that fine-tuned lightweight models outperform larger zero-shot models despite their smaller parameter count, indicating that task-specific supervision matters more than scale for conceptual novelty estimation. We further deploy the best-performing model as an online system for public interaction and real-time novelty scoring.
title NoveltyRank: A Retrieval-Augmented Framework for Conceptual Novelty Estimation in AI Research
topic Machine Learning
Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.14738