UF Warrington professor’s research among the most cited this century
Philip Podsakoff’s paper is the 17th most cited article in the past 25 years, according to Nature.
An article co-authored by Philip M. Podsakoff, Ph.D., Hyatt and Cici Brown Chair of Business at the University of Florida Warrington College of Business, has been recognized for its scholarly impact in three recent reviews from Nature, including as one of the most cited in the 21st century and most cited of all time.
Since its publication in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 2003, Podsakoff’s article, “Common Method Biases in Behavioral Research: A Critical Review of the Literature and Recommended Remedies,” has received over 53,000 citations in the Web of Science Core Collection Database and over 86,500 citations in Google Scholar. With these citations, the paper is the 17th most cited article in the past 25 years out of over 52 million articles tracked in the Web of Science Core Collection during that period.
Nature also identified Podsakoff’s paper, written with Scott MacKenzie, Jeong-Yeon Lee and Nathan Podsakoff, as the 42nd most-cited article of all time, out of almost 82 million papers that have been included in the Web of Science since it began tracking academic articles.
In another review, Nature ranked Podsakoff’s article as the 27th most cited paper in 2023 (with 5,646 citations in the Web of Science), and the fourth most cited paper in the social sciences that year.
The paper examines the extent to which method biases influence behavioral research results, identifies potential sources of method biases, discusses the cognitive processes through which method biases influence responses to measures, evaluates the many different procedural and statistical techniques that can be used to control method biases, and provides recommendations for how to select appropriate procedural and statistical remedies for different types of research settings.
“Method biases are a common problem faced by researchers in the organizational, behavioral and social sciences who conduct survey research,” Podsakoff noted about why he believes that the article has been so impactful. “The variance in survey items is not only attributable to the construct being measured, but also to the method of measurement and to random measurement error.”
There are two harmful effects of systematic method variance, he explained. First, it can bias the estimates of the reliability and validity of the measures of constructs used in a survey.
“Typically, but not always, this means that method variance enhances the reliability and validity of constructs being measured,” he said.
The second problem is that measurement variance can bias the parameter estimates of the relationships between measures of different constructs. Often, this is reflected in stronger relationships than would be observed without the presence of these biases.
“Our paper not only identifies the sources of these forms of bias, but it also provides remedies that researchers can use to address them,” Podsakoff said. “Importantly, I believe that providing researchers with practical recommendations on how to deal with method biases is a key to the article’s success.”
Originally written while Podsakoff was the John F. Mee Chair of Management at Indiana University, he is particularly proud that two of his co-authors were Ph.D. students at the time, including his son Nathan Podsakoff, who was pursuing his Ph.D. in management at the University of Florida, and Jeong-Yeon Lee, who was pursuing his degree at Indiana University.
Nathan Podsakoff is currently the Chair of the Department of Management in the Eller College of Business at the University of Arizona, and Lee is a Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources at Seoul National University. The final co-author, Scott MacKenzie, is professor emeritus in marketing at Indiana University.
Despite being written over two decades ago, the issues addressed in the 2003 article are still important today. In a paper published in 2024 by Podsakoff, he and his coauthors address how common method bias undermines research validity through multiple overlapping sources that are both widespread and difficult to remedy, despite researchers’ growing awareness of the problem.
The paper, “Common Method Bias: It’s Bad, Its Complex, It’s Widespread, and It’s Not Easy to Fix,” co-authored by Nathan Podsakoff, Larry Williams of Texas Tech University, Junhui Yang (Ph.D. ‘26), and Chengquan Huang, has already been designated a “Hot Paper” by the Web of Science. Papers granted this designation are those that receive enough citations to place them in the top 0.1% of the academic field (and year) in which the articles are published. Although the paper was only published a year ago, it has already received 270 citations in the Web of Science, and almost 400 citations in Google Scholar.
In addition to the article noted by Nature, Podsakoff has co-authored two articles that have received over 11,000 citations, and eight other articles that have been cited at least 1,000 times in the Web of Science. Fewer than half of 1% of all articles tracked in the Web of Science receive at least 1,000 citations.
A paper by another University of Florida professor, Thomas Schmittgen, Ph.D., chair of pharmaceutics in the UF College of Pharmacy, earned a place among the most influential scientific works of the century. His 2001 publication introduced a now widely used approach for gene expression analysis and is the second most-cited research article of the 21st century with nearly 150,000 citations in the Web of Science database. It is also the fifth most cited of all time, according to Nature.
