If You’re A Researcher, and You Don’t Love Your Research — Perhaps You’re Not Doing It Right?
If You’re A Researcher, and You Don’t Love Your Research — Perhaps You’re Not Doing It Right?
I am so happy that our newly merged school has 18 researchers in the just published Top 2% of the Most-cited Scientists by Stanford University Ranking 2023 (for a single year), of which 13 are in our Cyber and Systems Engineering research area:
Hussain, Amir World postion: 22,475
Ojaroudi Parchin, Naser World postion: 80,236
Maglaras, Leandros, World postion: 891,026
Manjakkal, Libu 99,790
Sundaram, Senthilarasu 104,866
Ahmad, Jawad 106,126
Ahmed, Jubaer 106,804
Yu, Hongnian 139,890
Buchanan, Bill 168,476
Tan, Zhiyuan 174,525
La Spada, Luigi 180,453
See, Chan Hwang 185,993
Nguyen, Huynh 194,931.
Overall, we have 52% of the named people from the whole of the university, and our impact is growing fast. So, I thought I would share some tips on getting higher citations for research active academic and researchers.
Paper citations counts is not a perfect metric
While not a perfect metric, the citation count of a paper can give some indication of the impact of a paper. It is sometimes useful to check your Google Scholar record, and make sure it is up-to-date (especially that they have your name right that appears in the papers and that you have a photo). This gives you a place to see if your papers are having an impact.
Note that the Top 2% list is this one is based on Scopus and which is typically more accurate. In Google Scholar, some year-on-year growth is a good sign that your work is increasing in its impact, so try and set yourself a target for a year so that you can, at least, get more citations than the previous year — but this is not a real measure of the quality of your work (and often there is a lag of at least a year or two in publishing high-quality work and the first signs of it having a real impact).
Review papers
Overall, review papers do then to get a higher citation, so sometimes, to gain a bit of esteem, you might consider writing up a review paper on evolving areas. Generally, good reviews in newly defined areas will do well, as they will give others a summary of the state-of-the-art, and pointers to researcher direction. But work with new contributions is typically always seen as the best work, so don’t focus too much on review papers. As you may know, review papers are unlikely to be seen as 3* or 4* work (unless they create a new ontology around a field).
Know your rockets from your squibs
As you may know, some papers rise like rockets, whereas others are damp squibs. If you can, find out why researchers are referencing your highly cited papers, and see if you can continue the success of the work. Please also remember that good work might not be picked up by others until many years in the future. The papers that created Elliptic Curve Cryptography sat for years with little impact until researchers discovered its usage. So have faith in your papers, or find out why no one has fallen in love with your paper.
The quality of the delivery?
High-quality papers should always find a way to make a contribution, but appearing in top-ranking journals and conferences will get them noticed quickly. So, being ambitious at the level of the journal/conference can help overall.
Not the true measurement of quality and rigor
But, please remember, the citation count generally has little influence on the REF quality assessment of a paper, as the paper is read for its contribution and rigour — in isolation to the number of citations it has. So, don’t worry if a good paper is not performing well for citations — it can still be seen as a strong paper. Saying this, though, within the impact narrative of the paper in REF, you can outline that the paper received a strong impact through being highly cited and used by other to build new methods. So, it does help to show that your paper is being used by others — and where you can describe how others have advanced your work.
Quality over quantity — ever time
Remember that to have published X papers is often not a great metric to define in your profile — as the longer you have been in a field means you are likely to have published more papers, and you could have published X bad papers. Overall, it is often the quality of your outputs that matters much more than the number of papers you produce. One paper which has a high impact is worth much more than many papers that go nowhere, so think about how you showcase quality in your profile. This might mean you have gaps in your work as you work on high-quality work — and which often takes many iterations over months to get right — and explain to others why the gap exists and why it is part of a major contribution to the field.
Catch the wave
A bit of a “trick” to success, is to often catch the wave of a new method, and be one of the first in the area to publish, but watch out for this, as it can take you away from the thing you have true expertise in. If you can, take your specialism with you, and apply to a newly evolving area. And, don’t fossilize your work and don’t become a dinosaur — know when a field is dying on its field, and where few people are interested in your work.
Read papers
If you can, find some time to read papers — on the train or over lunch — and keep up-to-date with your field, and spot the opportunity in a newly created method, or take an older one and give it some new life. A reading club in your supervision team — or one you create — is a great way for everyone to share their viewpoints on a new paper.
Know what you are good at, and known for
Also, get known for some things that you are good at, and people will respect your contributions and seek out your work. It is great to show a timeline of your contributions in a field and where you can mention it in your publications — so that others can follow the contributions you have made.
And, finally, get more known in your field and where people watch out for your work. Get yourself on editorial boards and conference organisations, and people will recognise you. Do visionary and thorough leadership papers every so often, and get a blog on new work — so that others can understand the direction of your work. Have think about how others see you and would say, “Bob is a true expert in X”, and where X isn’t a wide field but a more narrow specialism. This often requires you to continually read about your specialism and keep up-to-date. — but make sure you love your specialism, and you don’t want to get into something that you do not have a passion for. Everyone, so, often, though, it can be time for a refresh, and more into new areas, as you get bored of your specialism and need to move with new areas.
Conclusions
Please, note this is just my personal viewpoint, and there are many other viewpoints on paper citations and which might oppose these viewpoints — so make up your own mind. One thing that is for sure, is that the higher the impact of our work, the more contribution we are likely to make to our world.
But, most of all, have fun doing research, and if you don’t have fun, then you are not doing it right. Take advantage of the freedom that you are given and contribute to our world. One paper might change your world and everyone else’s world in an instant.
You have the opporunity to have a vision and a dream, and make new things that could end up having a great impact on our world — so don’t waste the opportunity. Know what you are good at, and love your research — and its infectuous in a good way. And, if you do good work, others will follow you — and you can become a leader in your field — not because of your role, but because of your expertise.