This account of the Matthew effect is another small exercise in the psychosociological analysis of the workings of science as a social institution. The initial problem is transformed by a shift in theoretical perspective. As originally identified, the Matthew effect was construed in terms of enhancement of the position of already eminent scientists who are given disproportionate credit in cases of collaboration or of independent multiple discoveries. Its significance was thus confined to its implications for the reward system of science. By shifting the angle of vision, we note other possible kinds of consequences, this time for the communication system of science. The Matthew effect may serve to heighten the visibility of contributions to science by scientists of acknowledged standing and to reduce the visibility of contributions by authors who are less well known. We examine the psychosocial conditions and mechanisms underlying this effect and find a correlation between the redundancy function of multiple discoveries and the focalizing function of eminent men of science—a function which is reinforced by the great value these men place upon finding basic problems and by their self-assurance. This self-assurance, which is partly inherent, partly the result of experiences and associations in creative scientific environments, and partly a result of later social validation of their position, encourages them to search out risky but important problems and to highlight the results of their inquiry. A macrosocial version of the Matthew principle is apparently involved in those processes of social selection that currently lead to the concentration of scientific resources and talent ( 50 ).

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/159/3810/56.full.pdf

The Matthew effect in science. The reward and communication systems of science are considered.

To better define levels of accomplishment for publishing journal articles in strategic management, a bibliometric study was performed on the publication records of 96 doctorates in the field whose first post-degree job was in academics. By examining 20 journals that are outlets for research in strategic management, publication records were developed for each individual for the first 5-10 years following receipt of the doctoral degree. Two factors influenced the publication records of these new faculty. Having publications prior to receiving the doctorate and getting a first job at an institution with a graduate program in management were associated with more frequent publishing after an academic career began. As expected, the number of papers published was related to the likelihood of receiving tenure. However, despite the fact that they had produced more papers during the first 5 years than male faculty members and had higher citation rates, female faculty members were less likely to receive tenure. The findings are discussed in terms of institutional policy for hiring and evaluating new faculty.

Publication records and tenure decisions in the field of strategic management

As a communications system, the network of journals that play a paramount role in the exchange of scientific and technical information is little understood Periodically since 1927, when Gross and Gross published their study (1) of references in 1 year’s issues of the Journal of the American Chemical Socie/y, pieces of the network have been illuminated by the work of Bradford (2), Allen (3), Gross and Woodford (4), Hooker (5), Henkle (6), Fussier (7), Brown (8), and others (9) Nevertheless, there is still no map of the journal network as a whok To date, studies of the network and of the interrelation of its components have been limited in the number of journak, the areas of scientific study, and the periods of time their authors were able to consider, Such shortcomings have not been due to any lack of purpose, insight, or energy on the part of investigators, but to the practical difficulty of compiling and manipulating manually the enormous amount of necessary data A solution to this problem of data is available in the data base used to produce the Science Citation Index ( SCI ) (10) The coverage of the SCI is international and multidisciplinary; it has grown from 600 journals in 1964 to 2400 journals in 1972, and now includes the world’s most important scientific and technical journals in mow disciplines The SCI is published quarterly and is cumulated annually and quinquennially, but the data base from which the volumes are compiled is maintained on magnetic tape and is updated weekly At the end of 1971, this data base contained more than 27 mi[tion references to about 10 million different published items These references appeared over the past decade in the footnotes and bibliographies of more than 2 million journal articles, communications, letters, and so on The data base is, thus, not only multidisciplinary, it covers a substantial period of time and, being in machine-readable form, is amenable to extensive manipulation by computer In 1971, the Institute for Scientfic Information (1S1) decided to undertake a systematic analysis of journal citation patterns across the whole of science and technology It began by extracting from the data base all references pobIished during the last quarter of 1969 in the 2200 journals then covered by the SCL The resultant sample was about 1 million citations of journals, books, reports, theses, and so forth To test whether this 3-month sample was representative of the year as a whole, it was matched against another sample made by selecting every 27th reference from the approximately 4 million references collected over the entire year The two samples were similar enough in scope (number of diflerent items cited) and detail (relative frequency of their citation by different journals) to

/pdf/citation-analysis-as-a-tool-in-journal-evaluation-u9xqu3886f.pdf

Citation analysis as a tool in journal evaluation.

Sustainability transitions: an emerging field of research and its prospects

Toward a new economics of science

Social Stratification in Science

Scientific output and recognition: a study in the operation of the reward system in science.

An experiment in which 150 proposals submitted to the National Science Foundation were evaluated independently by a new set of reviewers indicates that getting a research grant depends to a significant extent on chance. The degree of disagreement within the population of eligible reviewers is such that whether or not a proposal is funded depends in a large proportion of cases upon which reviewers happen to be selected for it. No evidence of systematic bias in the selection of NSF reviewers was found.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/214/4523/881.full.pdf

Chance and consensus in peer review

For 200 years it has been assumed that the sciences are arranged in a hierarchy, with developed natural sciences like physics at the top and social sciences like sociology at the bottom. Sciences at the top of the hierarchy presumably display higher levels of consensus and more rapid rates of advancement than those at the bottom. A distinction is made between two classes of knowledge: the core, or fully evaluated and universally accepted ideas which serve as the starting points for graduate education, and the research frontier, or all research currently being conducted. Data are presented from a set of empirical studies which show that, at the top and at the bottom of the hierarchy in either cognitive consensus or the rate at which new ideas are incorporated. It is concluded that in all sciences knowledge at the research frontier is a loosely woven web characterized by substantial levels of disagreement and difficulty in determining which contributions will turn out to be significant. Even at the research...

Stephen Cole

Papers

Social Stratification in Science

Social Stratification in Science

Scientific output and recognition: a study in the operation of the reward system in science.

Chance and consensus in peer review

The Hierarchy of the Sciences