In this paper newly established characteristics of the so-called Matthew Effect for Countries (MEC) are presented: field-dependency, time-stability, order of magnitude. We find that the MEC is observable in all main scientific fields that were investigated. Over fifteen years the MEC has been relatively stable. The MEC is a redistribution phenomenon at the macro-level of the sciences. Its magnitude is small; the MEC affects only about five percent of the world production of citations. The MEC, however, crucially impacts many nations when their "national loss of citations" amounts to a high percentage of their expected citations. The relationship between the MEC and Merton's Matthew Principle is discussed. It is our hypothesis that the MEC provides an additional approach for the assessment of the scientific performance of nations.

In this paper we extend our studies to the micro-structure of the Matthew effect for countries (MEC). The MEC allows the ranking of countries by their Matthew Index. The rank distribution of countries, observable only at a macro-level, has its roots in re-distribution processes of citations in every journal of the database. These re-distributed citations we call Matthew citations. Data for 44 countries and 2712 journals (based on the Science Citation Index) are analyzed. The strength of the contribution of the individual journals to the MEC (their number of Matthew citations) is skewly distributed. Due to this high concentration of the MEC we are able to define a new type of journal: the Matthew core journal: 145 Matthew core journals account for 50% of the MEC. These journals carry a high potential of gaining a surplus of citations over what is expected and the risk of losing a high number of citations as well.

The recently discovered "Matthew effect for countries" (MEC) is a measurable phenomenon in the world-wide System of scientific communication. This System is of interest for scientometrics, sociology of science, äs well äs for research policy. Its functioning is based largely on citing mechanisms, involving the citation activity and choices of individual scientists, scientific institutions and whole scientific nations. The Science Citation Index is an appropriate means for studying and assessing the scientific power of nations. The MEC states that a minority of countries, expecting a high number of citations per scientific paper, is gaining even more citations than expected, while the majority of countries, expecting only a low number of citations per scientific paper, is gaining even fewer citations than expected."Relative national loss/gain of citations" is a measure that describes the extent a country is affected by the MEC. Countries belonging to the "losers" -the majority that experiences a loss of citations -can be assigned to a "Left World", the "winners" -those few countries which gain extra citationsto a "Right World" in which the top s.cientific nations are found. The results that establish the existence of a MEC are based on the investigation of 44 countries which produce altogether about 2,5 Million scientific papers and 9,5 million citations over five years. In this study the MEC is confronted with the entire gospel parable of the entrusted talents (ST. MATTHEW 25,(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30). A detailed correspondence of essential aspects of the bibliometric MEC on the one hand and the Biblical gospel pärable, on the other is observed.

Actually the Matthew effect for countries (MEC) was discovered at Holy Eve 1994. Since then more than 30 papers of mine -many of them together with Andrea Scharnhorst and Eberhard Bruckner -appeared in journals or were read at conferences of international and national scientific societies. 1-6 It is not the task of this paper to present a bibliometric analysis of those paper's impact, nor to give any detailed historical description of the surprising findings following the discovery, I'd rather try to unfold -from the heightened standpoint of our days -a new summary of the Matthew phenomenon, because I am convinced it will not lose its fascination and importance in the years to come. A saying older than the BibleWhen modern people hear the term "Matthew effect" they associate it in most cases with the wide-spread understanding that "the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer". It seems that this saying is much older than the Bible, and that even the wellknown sentence in the biblical parable of the entrusted talents: "For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that has not shall be taken away even that which he has" [ST. MATTHEW 25:29] is most preferably treated in that above way "the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer". After having read in a newspaper of my country exactly this treatment even by a very respected personality of our protestant church, I have given up my hope that in a near future the christian part of mankind will change its meaning about the semantics of the parable of the entrusted talents. And as far as we cannot now correct the writers of the Bible and must fight without any hope for success against that convenient misunderstanding, we rather can R.K.Merton, private communication. The "rich versus poor" version is pessimistic, but convenient, while the essence of the parable is optimistic but challenging.

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