Negatively correlated author seniority and the number of acknowledged people: Name-recognition as a signal of scientific merit?

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Abstract

Evidence from five general-interest journals in economics reveals an inverse relationship between author seniority and the number of colleagues whom authors choose to thank and acknowledge. The large seniority effect is insensitive to the inclusion of controls for the number of co-authors, number of pages, number of words in the title, and journal fixed effects. The data are consistent with the hypothesis that name-recognition is an important signal used by economists in evaluating scientific merit.

Introduction

In some respects, it is puzzling that economists routinely include acknowledgments sections in their scientific writing. The marginal contribution of acknowledgments to the value of scientific output does not, for example, obviously exceed marginal cost in terms of scarce journal pages and readers' attention.2 Insofar as consumers of academic writing are interested enough to read acknowledgments – and many of us are – a number of non-trivial questions arise regarding the manner in which readers make use of the information conveyed in lists of acknowledged people.

To investigate the possibility that acknowledgments influence the interpretation of scientific writing and, consequently, affect authors' expected payoffs, it is useful to consider implications of the null hypothesis that acknowledgment sections simply reflect a long-established, exogenously given social norm in the academic profession. Under that hypothesis, one would expect zero correlation between the intensity with which authors thank colleagues and productivity-relevant characteristics of authors. There is a surprising pattern, however, concerning author seniority and the number of acknowledged people (NAP) in top-ranked journals. Authors in early phases of their careers say “thank you” noticeably more often than those with more experience in the profession do.

Fig. 1 shows the negative unconditional correlation between NAP and lead-author seniority among the 276 articles published in five general-interest economics journals during 2003. For each article, the figure plots the lead author’s seniority, defined as the number of years (as of 2003) since earning the Ph.D., and its NAP. Although the fit is not especially tight, there is an unmistakable downward-sloping relationship. Corresponding plots for individual journals (not shown here) reveal different degrees of negative correlation between author seniority and NAP among articles appearing in American Economic Review (AER), Econometrica, Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE), Journal of Political Economy (JPE), and Review of Economic Studies (RES) (0.33,0.12,0.25,0.27 and 0.20, respectively).

Negative correlations between thanking behavior as measured by NAP and seniority suggest the possibility that acknowledgments function as a signaling device, used by relatively unknown authors to increase the perceived quality of their papers through name-recognition. If successful, such strategic signaling would increase chances that the paper is accepted for publication and received well by readers outside the review process, generating frequent citations after publication. Gigerenzer et al. (1999), for example, show that reliance upon recognition-based heuristics leads to ecologically valid inferences in a number of real-world environments. We therefore focus on the question of whether the data are consistent with the hypothesis that authors use name-recognition in an attempt to provide readers with an additional cue for evaluating their work's scientific merit.

There are, of course, non-instrumental reasons why younger authors might thank more colleagues, which have nothing to do with professional advancement, perhaps arising unintentionally as the result of natural skill accumulation along the academic career path. For example, younger authors may have lower skill and consequently higher demand for assistance, leading to more acknowledged people in their articles. Noting that the unconditional correlation in Fig. 1 alone does not prove the name-recognition hypothesis, this paper considers alternative theories that make distinct predictions about the effects of adding controls for article-, author- and journal-specific characteristics in regressions of NAP on seniority.

The possibility that thanking and referencing are used instrumentally as signaling devices is worth considering because of the potentially large social costs associated with inefficient scientific review.3,4 Inefficiency in scientific review is not strictly limited to the formal review process and editorial decisions of academic journals. Even if reviewers chosen by journal editors never see the acknowledgments sections of submitted articles, as is standard protocol in double-blind review, there remains scope for acknowledgments to influence the managing editor and subsequent citation outcomes, which are determined largely by other scholars. Moreover, double-blind review is not the norm within economics. Even where it is adopted, reviewers in many cases will have already encountered the submitted manuscripts as working papers. Thus, we hypothesize that associating oneself with other scientists through acknowledgments serves to increase an article’s perceived merit because of the recognition cue, defined as the binary outcome indicating whether the reader recognizes the author or anyone linked to the author's work as an acknowledged person.

Scientific networks may naturally organize themselves around a particular empirical or theoretical consensus and evolve by strengthening that consensus further. Folster (1995) stresses the relevance of this mechanism in interpreting his finding that, as theorized by Kuhn (1962), referees tend to select papers that make incremental steps within established paradigms. It is difficult to assess whether social networks in which recognition plays a role would be inefficient or rather efficiency-enhancing, especially when recognition is positively correlated with productivity. According to Laband and Piette (1994a), editors should be disinterested gatekeepers rather than self-interested deal cutters. Laband and Piette also point out that editorial favoritism generates sizable wealth redistributions among members of the scientific community, providing strong incentives for authors to attempt to influence the chances of publication and citation.5 Among the simplest motives for signaling is to communicate one’s active membership in, or willingness to enter, a particular scientific network. Insofar as editors, reviewers and readers rely on network affiliations in interpreting and evaluating scientific speech, and make inferences about uncertain aspects of an article’s quality based on name-recognition, network affiliations may substantively condition aspiring academics’ chances of success.

The suggestion that the number of acknowledged people may yield information about the efficiency of scientific production is important because, as stressed by Laband and Tollison (2000b), economists vigorously disagree over how to appraise scientific merit. Laband and Tollison (2003) report increasing thank-you (same as NAP) frequencies in three leading journals over four decades and estimate economically significant value attributable to the feedback and comments that colleagues provide. Laband et al. (2002) also find that citations per article have increased dramatically in recent years, which they attribute to higher levels of investment per article by authors rather than signaling motives. There are divergent perspectives about the efficiency of the review process and the role of network- and gatekeeper-effects in facilitating or hindering scientific progress. One group of observers interprets existing evidence as supportive of the proposition that markets for scientific ideas are competitive and efficient. Others express concern that production of scientific knowledge is hampered by non-competitive and inefficient processes that generate significant social costs (Azar, 2006).

Anecdotal evidence of editorial favoritism continues to follow the reputations of well known journal editors who exercised a high degree of discretion, such as Keynes at Economic Journal (Moogridge, 1992), Clower at AER, and Houthakker at Review of Economics and Statistics (Shepherd, 1995). There is statistical evidence suggesting that journals affiliated with specific departments are biased toward authors with links to those same departments. Yotopoulos (1961) reports that, in the period from 1950 to 1959, Chicago authors contributed 15.6% of the pages in the JPE, and Harvard authors published 14.5% of pages in the QJE. Graves et al. (1982) show that more than 50% of University of Chicago economics faculty output appeared in only three journals, all with affiliations to that university, during the period from 1974 to 1978. In contrast, Harvard economists accounted for less than 15% of pages in those journals during the same period. However, this statistical and anecdotal evidence has brought about little consensus in the literature on the economics of economics regarding the efficiency of editorial review.

Many aspects of the issue have been examined, among them different types of referee processes, the quality of published articles, and the characteristics of referees and editors. Blank (1991) analyzed the effects of single-blind versus double-blind refereeing on papers submitted to AER between 1987 and 1989 and found that authors at top-five ranked universities were not affected by the type of review process used. In contrast, Laband and Piette (1994b) analyzed citations of 1051 articles published in 28 economics journals. They found that papers published in journals employing double-blind review receive a greater number of subsequent citations than papers published in journals with single-blind review.

Medoff (2004) examined articles published in the QJE and JPE in 1990 and found no selection bias toward papers written by authors with Harvard and Chicago connections, respectively. He showed that articles by Harvard and Chicago faculty published in the JPE are more numerous and of higher quality (according to citation statistics) than articles written by authors with other affiliations.

Hamermesh (1994) studied the characteristics of referees at four general-interest and three field journals in economics, finding that the average referee has higher quality than the average paper being reviewed. Mackie (1998), on the other hand, surveyed referees at seven economics journals and found that referees do not use objective criteria in evaluating research papers.

Faria’s (2005) theoretical model of strategic interaction between journal editors and authors predicted that editors of leading journals will choose to enforce strict norms of methodological orthodoxy, resulting in conformity among authors. Laband and Piette (1994a) found that, although journal editors sometimes practice editorial favoritism, on balance they use professional connections in an efficiency-enhancing pursuit of high-impact papers. Similarly, Medoff (2003) examined six core economics journals in 1990 and found that papers published by authors with editorial connections have higher quality than articles by those without such connections.

The main contributions of this paper are to demonstrate the negative correlation between seniority and NAP, and to propose NAP as a proxy for assessing the efficiency of scientific review. As Medoff (2004) argues, previous measures used to investigate the possibility of editorial bias are only rough proxies for the determinants of editorial outcomes because the fundamentals are difficult to observe directly. Rejected articles are typically not available for public observation, preventing easy comparison of published and unpublished authors. Also, the process by which editors choose referees is rarely observable or easy to quantify. Finally, the supply side of the submission process based on authors’ preferences over journals leads to a confounding selection problem that is difficult to control for in empirical studies. Thus, caution must be applied in developing arguments that attempt to establish suspicious correlations as causal relationships.

The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces competing theories with testable predictions and distinct efficiency implications. Section 3 describes the data and reports estimated regression models of NAP. Section 4 focuses on interpretations of the results and prospects for future investigations to make use of NAP.

Section snippets

Theories and hypotheses

When choices regarding whom to thank and acknowledge are decided in a strategic manner, with intent to send outcome-altering information to editors, reviewers, and other readers who may eventually decide to cite the paper, the author’s signaling behavior is classified as instrumental. We do not assume that all acknowledgements are instrumental. Economists may use acknowledgments to articulate respect for academic tradition, or in pursuit of other social and psychological goals quite removed

Data and estimation of the model

The data consist of all 276 full-length articles published in AER, Econometrica, JPE, QJE, and Review of Economics Studies in 2003. Notes, comments, book reviews and all articles from AER Papers and Proceedings were excluded.

Table 1 lists the top-10 articles ranked according to the number of acknowledged people. All variables in Table 1 are directly observable from the published articles themselves with the exception of the lead author’s seniority, which was computed based on publication dates

Discussion

The data show conditionally as well as unconditionally that junior authors acknowledge significantly more colleagues than senior authors do. The effect is consistent with the hypothesis that recognition plays a non-negligible role in the determination of scientific merit. Although the data do not rule out all other explanations, they do seem to rule out at least two non-signaling theories as primary explanations for empirical seniority effects. First, the hypothesis that age-related confounds

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