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

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that the journal's impact factor significantly influences citation counts of identical papers, revealing a Matthew effect in bibliometrics beyond intrinsic paper quality.

Contribution

It introduces an original method using duplicate papers to isolate journal impact effects, providing empirical evidence of the Matthew effect in citation practices.

Findings

Duplicate papers in high-impact journals receive twice as many citations.

Journal impact factor exerts a strong influence on citation counts.

Intrinsic paper quality alone does not fully explain citation differences.

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.