Uses of the novelty metrics proposed by Shah et al.: what emerges from the literature?

Abstract Several concepts and types of procedures for assessing novelty and related concepts exist in the literature. Among them, the two approaches originally proposed by Shah and colleagues are often considered by scholars. These metrics rely on well-defined novelty types and a specific concept of novelty; however, more than 20 years after the first publication, it is still not clear whether and to what extent these metrics are actually used, why they are used and how. Through a comprehensive review of the papers citing the main work of Shah, Vargas-Hernandez & Smith (2003a, 2003b) (the main study where the metrics are comprehensively described and applied), the present work aims to bridge this gap. The results highlight that only a few of the citing papers actually use the assessment approach proposed by Shah et al. and that a nonnegligible number uses a modified or adapted version of the original metrics. Furthermore, several criticalities in the application of the metrics have been uncovered, which are expected to provide relevant information for scholars involved in reliable and repeatable novelty assessments.