ReviewJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2014
The Matthew effect in empirical data.
Review in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 67 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
67 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 432 citations in OpenAlex.
- Exploring Gender Bias in Six Key Domains of Academic Science: An Adversarial Collaboration.Psychological science in the public interest : a journal of the American Psychological Society · 2023Pooled it
- Challenges in developing methods for quantifying the effects of weather and climate on water-associated diseases: A systematic review.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2017Pooled it
- Spatial spillovers, mediating mechanisms and moderating effects of industrial agglomeration in promoting green total factor productivity.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Artificial Intelligence in Anterior Cruciate Ligament Tear Diagnosis: A Bibliometric Analysis of the 50 Most Cited Studies.The Indian journal of radiology & imaging · 2026Review
- Videos in short-video sharing platforms as sources of information on heatstroke: a cross-sectional content analysis study.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- AI literacy and creative self-beliefs among Chinese college students: examining the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Socioeconomic and demographic predictors of extracurricular achievements among UK medical students (FAST study).BMJ open · 2025Article
- Functional connectivity and GABAergic signaling modulate the enhancement effect of neurostimulation on mathematical learning.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Reinforcement generates systematic differences without heterogeneity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Ethnic diversity and inclusiveness among medical residents in the Netherlands: results from a single-centered survey study.BMC medical education · 2025Article
- Measuring social mobility in temporal networks.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Unmeasured human transcription factor ChIP-seq data shape functional genomics and demand strategic prioritization.Briefings in functional genomics · 2025Article
- Researchers aren't the story: why we should cite theories and findings, not people.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- A Bibliometric Analysis of the Top 50 Most Cited Articles on Iatrogenic Nerve Injuries of the Upper Limb Following Surgery.Journal of brachial plexus and peripheral nerve injury · 2025Review
- A large-scale database of Mandarin Chinese word associations from the Small World of Words Project.Behavior research methods · 2024Article
- Collective dynamics behind success.Nature communications · 2024Review
- Performance of Artificial Intelligence Content Detectors Using Human and Artificial Intelligence-Generated Scientific Writing.Annals of surgical oncology · 2024Article
- Self-organization in Slovenian public spending.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- The Matthew Effect: Prevalence of Doctor and Physician Parents among Ophthalmology Applicants.Journal of academic ophthalmology (2017) · 2023Article
- Subject Specific Mastery Motivation in Moldovan Middle School Students.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
7 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The Matthew effect describes the phenomenon that in societies, the rich tend to get richer and the potent even more powerful. It is closely related to the concept of preferential attachment in network science, where the more connected nodes are destined to acquire many more links in the future than the auxiliary nodes. Cumulative advantage and success-breads-success also both describe the fact that advantage tends to beget further advantage. The concept is behind the many power laws and scaling behaviour in empirical data, and it is at the heart of self-organization across social and natural sciences. Here, we review the methodology for measuring preferential attachment in empirical data, as well as the observations of the Matthew effect in patterns of scientific collaboration, socio-technical and biological networks, the propagation of citations, the emergence of scientific progress and impact, career longevity, the evolution of common English words and phrases, as well as in education and brain development. We also discuss whether the Matthew effect is due to chance or optimization, for example related to homophily in social systems or efficacy in technological systems, and we outline possible directions for future research.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.