Previous work has suggested journal rank as a major associate of
irreproducibility (Brembs et al., 2013), and that high-impact journals favour authors from leading
institutions (Kulal et al., 2025). Our study highlights how university ranking is among the most
striking correlates of irreproducibility. Taken together, the cause and effect relationship at play here
may be driven most by factors associated with institutional prestige, such as trust among networks of
colleagues that act as editors and reviewers, leading to greater acceptance rates at high-impact
journals. Importantly, our results suggest this greater acceptance does not strictly reflect a high
quality of the work being published, but rather a willingness to trust irreproducible work more
frequently if it comes from a prestigious institute.