偶然看到一篇文章，与大家一起分享。The first mover advantage of scientific publication。据这位作者研究，某个领域最先发表的文章，尽管质量可能一般，也会获得相对更多的引用。说白了就是：三十六计，先发为上。文章内容简介见下面：

ＰＤＦ全文链接：http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0809/0809.0522v1.pdf

作者网页链接：http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/

The first mover advantage of scientific publication

M. E. J. Newman

Mathematical models of the scientific citation process predict a strong “first-mover” effect under
which the first papers in a field will, essentially regardless of content, receive citations at a rate
enormously higher than papers published later. Moreover papers are expected to retain this advantage
in perpetuity—they should receive more citations indefinitely, no matter how many other
papers are published after them. We test this conjecture against data from a selection of fields
and in several cases find a first-mover effect of a magnitude similar to that predicted by the theory.
Were we wearing our cynical hat today, we might say that the scientist who wants to become
famous is better off—by a wide margin—writing a modest paper in next year’s hottest field than
an outstanding paper in this year’s. On the other hand, there are some papers, albeit only a small
fraction, that buck the trend and attract significantly more citations than theory predicts despite
having relatively late publication dates. We suggest that papers of this kind, though they often
receive comparatively few citations overall, are probably worthy of our attention.