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The Anna Karenina principle: A way of thinking about success in science

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  • Lutz Bornmann
  • Werner Marx

Abstract

The first sentence of Leo Tolstoy's (1875–1877/2001) novel Anna Karenina is: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Here, Tolstoy means that for a family to be happy, several key aspects must be given (e.g., good health of all family members, acceptable financial security, and mutual affection). If there is a deficiency in any one or more of these key aspects, the family will be unhappy. In this article, we introduce the Anna Karenina principle as a way of thinking about success in science in three central areas in (modern) science: (a) peer review of research grant proposals and manuscripts (money and journal space as scarce resources), (b) citation of publications (reception as a scarce resource), and (c) new scientific discoveries (recognition as a scarce resource). If resources are scarce at the highly competitive research front (journal space, funds, reception, and recognition), there can be success only when several key prerequisites for the allocation of the resources are fulfilled. If any one of these prerequisites is not fulfilled, the grant proposal, manuscript submission, the published paper, or the discovery will not be successful.

Suggested Citation

  • Lutz Bornmann & Werner Marx, 2012. "The Anna Karenina principle: A way of thinking about success in science," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(10), pages 2037-2051, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:63:y:2012:i:10:p:2037-2051
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.22661
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    Cited by:

    1. Arianna Marchetti & Phanish Puranam, 2022. "Organizational cultural strength as the negative cross-entropy of mindshare: a measure based on descriptive text," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-14, December.
    2. Tahamtan, Iman & Bornmann, Lutz, 2018. "Creativity in science and the link to cited references: Is the creative potential of papers reflected in their cited references?," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 906-930.
    3. Thara Prabhakaran & Hiran H. Lathabai & Susan George & Manoj Changat, 2018. "Towards prediction of paradigm shifts from scientific literature," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 117(3), pages 1611-1644, December.
    4. Alonso Rodríguez-Navarro & Ricardo Brito, 2022. "The link between countries’ economic and scientific wealth has a complex dependence on technological activity and research policy," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(5), pages 2871-2896, May.
    5. Werner Marx & Lutz Bornmann, 2013. "The emergence of plate tectonics and the Kuhnian model of paradigm shift: a bibliometric case study based on the Anna Karenina principle," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 94(2), pages 595-614, February.
    6. Tahamtan, Iman & Bornmann, Lutz, 2018. "Core elements in the process of citing publications: Conceptual overview of the literature," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 203-216.

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