10-Year Impact Awards
Sage’s 10-Year Impact Awards recognize academic papers appearing in Sage-published journals that have achieved lasting impact. The winning papers are the most cited over a 10-year period, highlighting research whose significance has endured and, often, grown over time, including work whose influence may have been overlooked in the short term. Sage, the parent of Social Science Space, started the awards program in 2020.
Why 10 years?
Standard two- and five-year citation windows do not capture the full impact of papers whose influence develops more gradually or is recognized later. This is especially common in the social and behavioral sciences, where methodological diversity, an emphasis on new approaches rather than solely iterative ones, and stark disciplinary differences mean impact often unfolds over longer horizons. By looking at influence over a decade, these awards counter short-termism, celebrating research that continues to shape debate and inform thinking long after publication.
The awards are just one part of Sage’s broader commitment to better measure impact in the social and behavioral sciences. For a fuller understanding of the broader issues, read an excerpt from Ziyad Marar’s On Measuring Social Science Impact, alongside a collection of scholarly responses to his piece. Sage also offers its sage Policy Profiles tool, which allows individual researchers to both discovered where their work has been cited in policy documents and to discover where they might contribute scholarship to policy ecosystems.
Below is a list of the winners to date. In many cases, you can also hear directly from previous winners reflecting on how their work has been used in the years since publication.
2025
“Bibliometric Methods in Management and Organization” by Ivan Zupic and Tomaž Čater in Organizational Research Methods
“Qualitative Content Analysis: A Focus on Trustworthiness” by Satu Elo, Maria Kääriäinen, Outi Kanste, Tarja Pölkki, Kati Utriainen, and Helvi Kyngäs in Sage Open
“Popular Paper Examines Ensuring Trustworthiness in Qualitative Analysis”
2024
“Vision meets robotics: The KITTI dataset” by Andreas Geiger, Philip Lenz, Christoph Stiller, and Raquel Urtasun in The International Journal of Robotics Research
“A Milestone Dataset on the Road to Self-Driving Cars Proves Highly Popular“
“Dual-Process Theories of Higher Cognition: Advancing the Debate” by Jonathan St. B. T. Evans and Keith E. Stanovich in Perspectives on Psychological Science
“Paper to Advance Debate on Dual-Process Theories Genuinely Advanced Debate“
“The New Statistics: Why and How” by Geoff Cumming in Psychological Science
“Paper Opening Science to the New Statistics Proves Its Import a Decade Later“
2023
“The Nature and Organization of Individual Differences in Executive Functions: Four General Conclusions” by Akira Miyake and Naomi P. Friedman in Current Directions in Psychological Science
“Paper on Understanding Individual Differences In Executive Functions Proves Hugely Popular“
“What We Know and Don’t Know About Corporate Social Responsibility: A Review and Research Agenda” by Herman Aguinis and Ante Glavas in the Journal of Management
“Honoring a Prescient Look Corporate Social Responsibility“
“What Makes Online Content Viral?” by Jonah Berger and Katherine L. Milkman in the Journal of Marketing Research
“A Viral Paper on Determining What Makes Online Content Viral“
2022
“Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: A New Source of Inexpensive, Yet High-Quality, Data?” by Michael Buhrmester, Tracy Kwang, and Samuel D. Gosling, published in Perspectives on Psychological Science. This paper has more than 7,500 citations.
“Paper on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Proves a Durable Article“
“False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant” by Joseph P. Simmons, Leif D. Nelson, and Uri Simonsohn, published in Psychological Science. It has more than 4,100 citations.
“Paper on Showing Significance Proves Very Significant Decade Later“
“The Danish National Patient Register” by Elsebeth Lynge, Jakob Lynge Sandegaard, and Matejka Rebolj published in Scandinavian Journal of Public Health. It has more than 2,800 citations.
“Paper on Danish National Patient Register Keeps on Giving After 10 Years“
2021
“The Psychological Meaning of Words: LIWC and Computerized Text Analysis Method” by Yla R. Tausczik and James W. Pennebaker in Journal of Language and Social Psychology
“Factors Affecting Wound Healing” by S. Guo and L.A. DiPietro in Journal of Dental Research
“Customer Engagement Behavior: Theoretical Foundations and Research Directions” by Jenny van Doorn, Katherine N. Lemon, Vikas Mittal, Stephen Nass, Doreén Pick, Peter Pirner, and Peter C. Verhoef in Journal of Service Research
“Understanding the Foundations of Customer Engagement“
2020
“Improving Impact Studies of Teachers’ Professional Development: Toward Better Conceptualizations and Measures” by Laura M. Desimone in Educational Researcher, a publication of the American Educational Research Association
“Entrepreneurial Orientation and Business Performance: An Assessment of Past Research and Suggestions for the Future” by Andreas Rauch, Johan Wiklund, G.T. Lumpkin, and Michael Frese in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice
“How One Study on Entrepreneurial Orientation Would Impact the Field“
“Precarious Work, Insecure Workers: Employment Relations in Transition” by Arne L. Kalleberg in American Sociological Review, a publication of the American Sociological Association
