# Promotional Language and the Adoption of Innovative Ideas in Science

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.02798 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.02798/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 15 of its 72 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 4 Jun 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [SciBERT: A Pretrained Language Model for Scientific Text](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.10676/) (2019)
- [The science of fake news](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07903/) (2023)
- [Tradition and Innovation in Scientists' Research Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1302.6906/) (2013)
- [Neural Embeddings of Scholarly Periodicals Reveal Complex Disciplinary Organizations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08199/) (2020)
- [Invention as a Combinatorial Process: Evidence from U.S. Patents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.2938/) (2014)
- [Early-career setback and future career impact](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.06958/) (2019)
- [Social Influence and Unfollowing Accelerate the Emergence of Echo Chambers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03919/) (2019)
- [Scientific Prizes and the Extraordinary Growth of Scientific Topics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09269/) (2020)
- [Dynamics of Cross-Platform Attention to Retracted Papers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.07798/) (2021)
- [The Gender Gap in Scholarly Self-Promotion on Social Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.05330/) (2022)
- [Mimicry Is Presidential: Linguistic Style Matching in Presidential Debates and Improved Polling Numbers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1508.01786/) (2015)
- [Prominent but Less Productive: The Impact of Interdisciplinarity on Scientists' Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.06802/) (2015)
- [Citations versus journal impact factor as proxy of quality: Could the latter ever be preferable?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.01803/) (2018)
- [Author Mentions in Science News Reveal Widespread Disparities Across Name-inferred Ethnicities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.01896/) (2020)
- [Why ex post peer review encourages high-risk research while ex ante review discourages it](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.13282/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Scientific production in the era of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.13187/) (2026)
- [Counterfactual LLM-based Framework for Measuring Rhetorical Style](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.19908/) (2025)
- [The Rise of Large Language Models and the Direction and Impact of US Federal Research Funding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.15485/) (2026)
- [Hype or not? Formalizing Automatic Promotional Language Detection in Biomedical Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.24638/) (2025)
- [An Analysis of Artificial Intelligence Adoption in NIH-Funded Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.07424/) (2026)
- [Unintended Negative Impacts of Promotional Language in Patent Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.04926/) (2026)
- [Structural Diversity Drives Disruptive Scientific Innovation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.12514/) (2026)
- [Examining the Cognitive Gap Between Authors and Peer Reviewers on Academic Paper Novelty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.13452/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

How are the merits of innovative ideas communicated in science? Here we conduct semantic analyses of grant application success with a focus on scientific promotional language, which has been growing in frequency in many contexts and purportedly may convey an innovative idea's originality and significance. Our analysis attempts to surmount limitations of prior studies by examining the full text of tens of thousands of both funded and unfunded grants from three leading public and private funding agencies: the NIH, the NSF, and the Novo Nordisk Foundation, one of the world's largest private science foundations. We find a robust association between promotional language and the support and adoption of innovative ideas by funders and other scientists. First, the percentage of promotional language in a grant proposal is associated with up to a doubling of the grant's probability of being funded. Second, a grant's promotional language reflects its intrinsic level of innovativeness. Third, the percentage of promotional language predicts the expected citation and productivity impact of publications that are supported by funded grants. Lastly, a computer-assisted experiment that manipulates the promotional language in our data demonstrates how promotional language can communicate the merit of ideas through cognitive activation. With the incidence of promotional language in science steeply rising, and the pivotal role of grants in converting promising and aspirational ideas into solutions, our analysis provides empirical evidence that promotional language is associated with effectively communicating the merits of innovative scientific ideas.