Does the “Jerome H. Ely Human Factors Article Award” predict scientific impact? We answered this question by investigating whether the 13 award winning papers published in Human Factors between 1987 and 2000 were cited much more frequently than the 730 non-award winning papers published during the same period. The results showed the award significantly increases the citation rate of articles, but accounts for only 0.2% to 1.3% of the variance in the citation rate. Author productivity accounts for far more variance in the authors' total citation rate (65.0%) and in the citation rate of the authors' most cited article (12.0%) than does award receipt. These results have practical implications for the objective recognition of scientific impact by professional societies and for the choice of research topics, particularly by graduate students.
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