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BackTrend: Evaluating Scientific Weak-Signal Prediction via Backward Reconstruction

arXiv · AI, language, vision and robotics · article · Sep 21, 2026 · UTC

Scientific weak signals are early, low-visibility research directions that later become central to mature scientific topics, yet existing resources such as trend tracking, citation forecasting, and foresight reports rarely provide validated reference sets that link concrete early precursors to later paradigms. We introduce BackTrend, a retrospective benchmark in which, given a mature target topic and a temporal evidence constraint, systems must recover two types of precursors: problem-space signals, underrecognized research problems, and solution-space signals, emerging methods for known probl

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