[3][4] A protologism becomes a neologism as soon as it appears in published press, on a website, or in a book, independently of the coiner[5]—though, most definitively, in a dictionary.
[12]According to Epstein, every word in use started out as a protologism, subsequently became a neologism, and then gradually grew to be part of the language.
[12] There is no fixed rule determining when a protologism becomes a stable neologism,[13] and according to Kerry Maxwell, author of Brave New Words: [A] protologism is unlikely to make the leap to neologism status unless society connects with the word or identifies a genuine need for it [...] there's no guarantee that simple exposure to these creations will be effective in getting them used, as discovered by British inventor Sir James Dyson when he fruitlessly attempted to promote a verb dyson (by analogy with hoover) in the early 2000s.
[14] It has been suggested protologisms are needed in scientific fields, particularly in the life sciences, where very complex interactions between partially understood components produce higher order phenomena.
[15] Nevertheless, until the unappreciated concept in question has been thoroughly investigated and shown to be a real phenomenon, it is improbable that the term would be used by anyone other than its creator[15] and achieve the status of neologism.