Journal of Applied Psychology.

Abstract

Explores determinants of academic recognition, reasoning that social scientists' advancement and career success may rest on the recognition received for scholarly work. Articles in the Journal of Applied Psychology are classified by the number and type of their research plots. Research plots, like plots in English literature, represent the basic skeleton of an article, the bare-bones scientific contribution an article claims to make (e.g., new independent variable explaining variance in an existing dependent variable). The type of research plot an article explores is related in this study to the subsequent recognition an article receives. In contrast, neither number of research plots nor popularity of the subject matter covered in an article independently affected the level of subsequent recognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)