Are higher quality papers cited more often?

Most researchers are aware of the increasing emphasis placed on citations as an indicator of quality by their colleagues, as well as by administrators and librarians. But is it true that high quality papers are cited more often? In what we believe to be the only previous publication to examine this question, West and McIlwaine (2002) selected 79 papers that had been published in the journal Addiction in 1997. These papers were rated by an …