Achievement and Ascriptive Processes in the Recognition of Scientific Articles

Most studies in the sociology of science have used individuals or organizations as their units of analysis. Using scientific articles provides an alternative method for studying the distribution of recognition or influence in science. The study of citations to articles not only permits a better examination of the functionalist distinction between achievement and ascriptive processes (relying on universalistic and "Matthew effect" criteria, respectively) but also considers intellectual factors in scientific communications-some of the major concerns of the critics of functionalism. This paper develops a methodfor the study of citations and applies it to a sample of geoscience articles. The results indicate that achievement processes are more important than ascriptive processes in the distribution of scientific influence. Most research in the sociology of science has employed two principal units of analysis: individuals and organizations. But Randall Collins suggests that one might get further insight into social processes by studying more elemental units of analysis-for example, the study of conversations and discovery of the reasons that some conversations have more influence than others. Given the difficulty of such studies of everyday life, Collins proposes that the scientific community has several advantages for micro-level analysis: scientific articles are obvious micro-units of analysis, which are analogous to conversations; articles are available for public inspection; they constitute a key element in gaining scientific influence; and citations to articles provide a measure of their influence on others. This paper illustrates how an article level of analysis can provide a valuable supplement to our knowledge about the distribution of influence in science. The first section of this paper outlines the functionalist perspective in the sociology of science (Merton, a) and suggests how two of the pro