The impact factor's Matthew effect: a natural experiment in bibliometrics Export

@article{citeulike:5645108, abstract = {Since the publication of Robert K. Merton's theory of cumulative advantage in science (Matthew Effect), several empirical studies have tried to measure its presence at the level of papers, individual researchers, institutions or countries. However, these studies seldom control for the intrinsic "quality" of papers or of researchers--"better" (however defined) papers or researchers could receive higher citation rates because they are indeed of better quality. Using an original method for controlling the intrinsic value of papers--identical duplicate papers published in different journals with different impact factors--this paper shows that the journal in which papers are published have a strong influence on their citation rates, as duplicate papers published in high impact journals obtain, on average, twice as much citations as their identical counterparts published in journals with lower impact factors. The intrinsic value of a paper is thus not the only reason a given paper gets cited or not; there is a specific Matthew effect attached to journals and this gives to paper published there an added value over and above their intrinsic quality.}, archivePrefix = {arXiv}, author = {Lariviere, Vincent and Gingras, Yves}, citeulike-article-id = {5645108}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.3177}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://arxiv.org/pdf/0908.3177}, day = {21}, eprint = {0908.3177}, keywords = {academia, bibliometrics, citation, citations, impactfactor, network, papers}, month = {Aug}, posted-at = {2009-08-25 16:55:51}, priority = {2}, title = {The impact factor's Matthew effect: a natural experiment in bibliometrics}, url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.3177}, year = {2009} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:5645108 L3 - citeulike-article-id:5645108 N2 - Since the publication of Robert K. Merton's theory of cumulative advantage in science (Matthew Effect), several empirical studies have tried to measure its presence at the level of papers, individual researchers, institutions or countries. However, these studies seldom control for the intrinsic "quality" of papers or of researchers--"better" (however defined) papers or researchers could receive higher citation rates because they are indeed of better quality. Using an original method for controlling the intrinsic value of papers--identical duplicate papers published in different journals with different impact factors--this paper shows that the journal in which papers are published have a strong influence on their citation rates, as duplicate papers published in high impact journals obtain, on average, twice as much citations as their identical counterparts published in journals with lower impact factors. The intrinsic value of a paper is thus not the only reason a given paper gets cited or not; there is a specific Matthew effect attached to journals and this gives to paper published there an added value over and above their intrinsic quality. TI - The impact factor's Matthew effect: a natural experiment in bibliometrics KW - academia KW - bibliometrics KW - citation KW - citations KW - impactfactor KW - network KW - papers AU - Lariviere, Vincent AU - Gingras, Yves PY - 2009/Aug/21/ UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.3177 ER -