Unpacking the Matthew effect in citations |
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| Affiliation: | 1. School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, 685 Cherry Street, Atlanta, GA 30332-0345, United States;2. Center for R&D Monitoring (ECOOM) and Department of Managerial Economics, Strategy and Innovation, University of Leuven, Waaistraat 6, 3000 Leuven, Belgium;3. Institute for Research Information and Quality Assurance (iFQ), Schuetzenstrasse 6a, 10117 Berlin, Germany;1. University of Munich, Germany;2. Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, Poschingerstr. 5, 81679 Munich, Germany;1. REQUIMTE/Departamento de Química e Bioquímica, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade do Porto, Rua do Campo Alegre, 687, 4169-007 Porto, Portugal;2. Departamento Engenharia Industrial e Gestão, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, s/n, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal;3. INESC-TEC, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, s/n, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal |
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| Abstract: | One problem confronting the use of citation-based metrics in science studies and research evaluations is the Matthew effect. This paper reviews the role of citations in science and decomposes the Matthew effect in citations into three components: networking, prestige, and appropriateness. The networking and prestige effects challenge the validity of citation-based metrics, but the appropriateness effect does not. Using panel data of 1279 solo-authored papers’ citation histories and fixed effects models, we test these three effects controlling for unobserved paper characteristics. We find no evidence of retroactive networking effect and only weak evidence of prestige effect (very small and not always significant), which provides some support for the use of citation-based metrics in science studies and evaluation practices. In addition, adding the appropriateness effect reduces the size of the prestige effect considerably, suggesting that previous studies controlling for paper quality but not appropriateness may have overestimated the prestige effect. |
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| Keywords: | Matthew effect Citation Networking Prestige Appropriateness |
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