Editorial highlighting and highly cited papers

Editorial highlighting---the process whereby journal editors select, at the time of publication, a small subset of papers that are ostensibly of higher quality, importance or interest---is by now a widespread practice among major scientific journal publishers. Depending on the venue, and the extent to which editorial resources are invested in the process, highlighted papers appear as News {\&} Views, Research Highlights, Perspectives, Editors' Choice, IOP Select, Editors' Summary, Spotlight on Optics, Editors' Picks, Viewpoints, Synopses, Editors' Suggestions, etc. Here, we look at the relation between highlighted papers and highly influential papers, which we define at two levels: having received enough citations to be among the (i) top few percent of their journal, and (ii) top 1{\%} of all physics papers. Using multiple linear regression and multilevel regression modeling we examine the parameters associated with highly influential papers. We briefly comment on cause and effect relationships between citedness and highlighting of papers.