An item of great value may be said to be worth its weight in gold. Some articles that appear in professional journals may rise to that level of acknowledged quality. Certain manuscripts result in authorial fame that steadily increases rather than diminishes with the passage of time. Other papers have a comet-like transitory brilliance that brightens the night intellectual sky, but gradually flame out and lose significance. Another large class encompasses the vast bulk of manuscripts that make it to the publication stage. They acquire little notice at first, but some eventually may be judged successfully as being the equivalent of adding one more brick to the gigantic edifice of existing knowledge about a given topic.