Degen

When writing an academic paper, contributions are roughly ranked in order of importance:

Filling a research gap 
> Proposing new theories/frameworks 
> Developing new methods/tools 
> Providing new empirical evidence 
> synthesizing innovations and interdisciplinary integration
 > Systematic overview and future directions
 > Practical applications or policy recommendations.

This order reflects the importance academics place on originality, incremental knowledge and impact.

I feel that this dimension of importance/contribution can also be moderately referenced when judging a project/protocol/new thing.