Most cited papers in Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation
What are the most cited papers in Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation?
The most cited paper in Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation is "Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks" (Albert-Ĺaszló Barabási, Réka Albert, 1999), with 36,811 citations. Next come "The Tragedy of the Commons" (23,379) and "The Evolution of Cooperation" (20,368).
Showing 50 of 100 papers. Every paper with more than 1,787 citations is listed.
| # | Paper | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks Albert-Ĺaszló Barabási, Réka Albert · Science | 15 Oct 1999 | 36,811 |
| 2 | The Tragedy of the Commons Garrett Hardin · Science | 13 Dec 1968 | 23,379 |
| 3 | The Evolution of Cooperation Robert Axelrod, William D. O. Hamilton · Science | 27 Mar 1981 | 20,368 |
| 4 | The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I William D. O. Hamilton · Journal of Theoretical Biology | Jul 1964 | 15,968 |
| 5 | Parental Investment and Sexual Selection Robert L. Trivers | 12 Jul 2017 | 9,562 |
| 6 | Evolution and the Theory of Games John Maynard Smith | 1988 | 8,017 |
| 7 | The Logic of Animal Conflict John Maynard Smith, George Price · Nature | Nov 1973 | 6,326 |
| 8 | Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation Martin A. Nowak · Science | 7 Dec 2006 | 5,999 |
| 9 | Altruistic punishment in humans Ernst Fehr, Simon Gächter · Nature | 2002 | 5,714 |
| 10 | Joint effect of ageing and multilayer structure prevents ordering in the voter model Oriol Artime, Juan Fernández-Gracia, José J. Ramasco et al. · LA Referencia (Red Federada de Repositorios Institucionales de Publicaciones Científicas) | 17 Mar 2017 | 5,609 |
| 11 | Optimal foraging, the marginal value theorem Eric L. Charnov · Theoretical Population Biology | Apr 1976 | 5,460 |
| 12 | Mate selection—A selection for a handicap Amotz Avishag Zahavi · Journal of Theoretical Biology | Sep 1975 | 5,378 |
| 13 | Population growth makes waves in the distribution of pairwise genetic differences. Alan R. Rogers, Henry C Harpending · Molecular Biology and Evolution | May 1992 | 4,653 |
| 14 | Evolutionary games and spatial chaos Martin A. Nowak, Robert Mccredie May · Nature | Oct 1992 | 4,563 |
| 15 | Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures David Michael Buss · Behavioral and Brain Sciences | Mar 1989 | 4,529 |
| 16 | Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments Ernst Fehr, Simon Gächter · American Economic Review | Sep 2000 | 4,423 |
| 17 | Sexual Strategies Theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating. David Michael Buss, David P. Schmitt · Psychological Review | 1993 | 4,288 |
| 18 | Statistical physics of social dynamics Claudio Castellano, Santo Fortunato, Vittorio Loreto · Reviews of Modern Physics | 11 May 2009 | 4,225 |
| 19 | Parent-Offspring Conflict Robert L. Trivers · American Zoologist | Feb 1974 | 4,217 |
| 20 | The genetical evolution of social behaviour. II William D. O. Hamilton · Journal of Theoretical Biology | Jul 1964 | 4,202 |
| 21 | Collective Action and the Evolution of Social Norms Элинор Остром · The Journal of Economic Perspectives | Aug 2000 | 4,107 |
| 22 | Positive interactions in communities Mark D. Bertness, Ragan M. Callaway · Trends in Ecology & Evolution | May 1994 | 3,885 |
| 23 | Manifesto for a Relational Sociology Mustafa Emirbayer · American Journal of Sociology | Sep 1997 | 3,801 |
| 24 | Theory of Feeding Strategies Thomas W. Schoener · Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics | Nov 1971 | 3,592 |
| 25 | Evolutionary stable strategies and game dynamics Peter Taylor, Leo Jonker · Mathematical Biosciences | Jul 1978 | 3,547 |
| 26 | Geometry for the selfish herd William D. O. Hamilton · Journal of Theoretical Biology | May 1971 | 3,494 |
| 27 | Optimal Foraging: A Selective Review of Theory and Tests Graham H. Pyke, H. Ronald Pulliam, Eric L. Charnov · The Quarterly Review of Biology | Jun 1977 | 3,409 |
| 28 | Identification of influential spreaders in complex networks Maksim Kitsak, Lazaros K. Gallos, Shlomo Havlin et al. · Nature Physics | 29 Aug 2010 | 3,266 |
| 29 | Evolution of networks Sergey N. Dorogovtsev, José F. F. Mendes · Advances In Physics | Jun 2002 | 3,215 |
| 30 | The complexity and stability of ecosystems Stuart L. Pimm · Nature | 1984 | 3,117 |
| 31 | Evolutionary games on graphs György Szabó, Gábor Fáth · Physics Reports | 30 Apr 2007 | 3,040 |
| 32 | THE MAJOR TRANSITIONS OF EVOLUTION Egbert Giles Leigh · Evolution | Dec 1995 | 3,004 |
| 33 | Effective leadership and decision-making in animal groups on the move Iain D. Couzin, Jens Krause, Nigel R. Franks et al. · Nature | Feb 2005 | 2,860 |
| 34 | Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment Urs Fischbacher, Simon Gächter, Ernst Fehr · Economics Letters | Jun 2001 | 2,853 |
| 35 | Bacterial competition: surviving and thriving in the microbial jungle Michael E. Hibbing, Clay Fuqua, Matthew R. Parsek et al. · Nature Reviews Microbiology | 30 Nov 2009 | 2,834 |
| 36 | Evolution of indirect reciprocity Martin A. Nowak, Karl Sigmund · Nature | Oct 2005 | 2,832 |
| 37 | Evolution of indirect reciprocity by image scoring Martin A. Nowak, Karl Sigmund · Nature | Jun 1998 | 2,764 |
| 38 | Biotic homogenization: a few winners replacing many losers in the next mass extinction Michael L. McKinney, Julie L. Lockwood · Trends in Ecology & Evolution | Nov 1999 | 2,732 |
| 39 | A simple model of global cascades on random networks Duncan J. Watts · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 30 Apr 2002 | 2,716 |
| 40 | Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich, Rodolfo Dirzo · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 10 Jul 2017 | 2,665 |
| 41 | Rational cooperation in the finitely repeated prisoners' dilemma David M. Kreps, Paul Milgrom, John Heath Roberts et al. · Journal of Economic Theory | Aug 1982 | 2,563 |
| 42 | The evolution of prestige: freely conferred deference as a mechanism for enhancing the benefits of cultural transmission Joseph Henrich, Francisco J. Gil-White · Evolution and Human Behavior | May 2001 | 2,549 |
| 43 | Putting the Altruism Back into Altruism: The Evolution of Empathy Frans Β. Μ. de Waal · Annual Review of Psychology | 21 Dec 2007 | 2,515 |
| 44 | Biological signals as handicaps Alan Grafen · Journal of Theoretical Biology | Jun 1990 | 2,507 |
| 45 | The ODD protocol: A review and first update Volker Grimm, Uta Berger, Donald Lee Deangelis et al. · Ecological Modelling | 14 Sep 2010 | 2,504 |
| 46 | Graph evolution Jure Leskovec, Jon Kleinberg, Christos Faloutsos · ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data | Mar 2007 | 2,495 |
| 47 | The logic of social exchange: Has natural selection shaped how humans reason? Studies with the Wason selection task Leda Cosmides · Cognition | Apr 1989 | 2,490 |
| 48 | The evolution of life histories Jesús Alberto León · Trends in Ecology & Evolution | Nov 1993 | 2,487 |
| 49 | A theory of reciprocity Armin Falk, Urs Fischbacher · Games and Economic Behavior | 27 Apr 2005 | 2,478 |
| 50 | The theory of games and the evolution of animal conflicts John Maynard Smith · Journal of Theoretical Biology | Sep 1974 | 2,463 |
Citations are OpenAlex's own counts, from its 2026-09-23 snapshot, so the ranking can differ from Google Scholar or Web of Science. A paper is listed for a field when OpenAlex files it under one of the field's topics; retracted papers and papers whose citation count cannot be traced to citing works are left out, and a preprint and the article it became are shown once. Release dates are OpenAlex's: where a source gave only a month or a year, that is what is shown. How the lists are chosen.