There are many ways to measure happiness in one's life and career. For example, I recall learning, as an undergraduate, that one's happiness could in part be calculated from the distance of one's home to the take-off and landing flight paths of major airports.
Anyway, for academic persons involved in research, happiness these days may derive in part from the number of times a publication is cited. In this case, the h in h-index does not refer to happiness, but for some people it might as well.
What I am wondering is, for any individual -- at whatever career stage, in whatever academic discipline, and with whatever personality traits you may have -- what is your personal minimum number of citations for you to feel happy, or at least moderately satisfied?
That is, when you look at your citation numbers for each publication, is there a particular number of citations that make say (to yourself, if not to anyone else), "OK, I am happy with that number of citations"? (leaving open the possibility that you would be happier if it were cited even more)
Is that number = 1? 5? 20? 37? 50? 100? 300? 1000? 7326? more?
What are the most important factors in deciding your personal minimum number of citations for happiness? I expect that the culture of each field plays a role. Is there are particular number that is considered pretty good in your field, and can you say what that approximate number is? For example, I have seen letters in support of tenure/promotion cases (not in my field) in which the letter-writer has asserted that the n < 10 citations of a paper is considered a very good number in that field. In my field, that would be considered not so good.
I expect that one's happiness with a publication's citation count experiences a bit of an uptick when that publication reaches a number that causes your actual h-index to go up, but is that your minimum number, or is your personal minimum number >> your h-index?
I don't want to give many details about myself, but my absolute minimum citation happiness number is indeed the one that makes my h-index go up (so this is a (slowly) moving target), but that milestone just causes a flicker of citation-happiness. For me, the true minimum citation happiness number is quite a bit higher, and therefore more elusive.
That's not to say that I am disappointed in or depressed about publications that don't exceed my citation-happiness threshold -- in fact, some of my all-time favorite papers are among my least cited ones. It's just that there is a certain bonus satisfaction that comes from having papers with (relatively) large numbers of citations, even for tenured professors whose careers don't hinge on these numbers.
The reason I have been thinking about citations recently (again) is because the other day, a (very) senior professor told me that he was upset about another colleague who doesn't cite his (the senior professor's work) when he should. He said that he wants his citation numbers to be as high as possible by the time he dies because "that's all we have" (as a legacy). I thought that was sad and disturbing, particularly coming from someone who has a large number of papers that have been cited more times than any paper of mine will ever be. I hope I don't feel that way when I am his (near retirement) age, even if it does make me happy when my papers are cited.
Anyway, for academic persons involved in research, happiness these days may derive in part from the number of times a publication is cited. In this case, the h in h-index does not refer to happiness, but for some people it might as well.
What I am wondering is, for any individual -- at whatever career stage, in whatever academic discipline, and with whatever personality traits you may have -- what is your personal minimum number of citations for you to feel happy, or at least moderately satisfied?
That is, when you look at your citation numbers for each publication, is there a particular number of citations that make say (to yourself, if not to anyone else), "OK, I am happy with that number of citations"? (leaving open the possibility that you would be happier if it were cited even more)
Is that number = 1? 5? 20? 37? 50? 100? 300? 1000? 7326? more?
What are the most important factors in deciding your personal minimum number of citations for happiness? I expect that the culture of each field plays a role. Is there are particular number that is considered pretty good in your field, and can you say what that approximate number is? For example, I have seen letters in support of tenure/promotion cases (not in my field) in which the letter-writer has asserted that the n < 10 citations of a paper is considered a very good number in that field. In my field, that would be considered not so good.
I expect that one's happiness with a publication's citation count experiences a bit of an uptick when that publication reaches a number that causes your actual h-index to go up, but is that your minimum number, or is your personal minimum number >> your h-index?
I don't want to give many details about myself, but my absolute minimum citation happiness number is indeed the one that makes my h-index go up (so this is a (slowly) moving target), but that milestone just causes a flicker of citation-happiness. For me, the true minimum citation happiness number is quite a bit higher, and therefore more elusive.
That's not to say that I am disappointed in or depressed about publications that don't exceed my citation-happiness threshold -- in fact, some of my all-time favorite papers are among my least cited ones. It's just that there is a certain bonus satisfaction that comes from having papers with (relatively) large numbers of citations, even for tenured professors whose careers don't hinge on these numbers.
The reason I have been thinking about citations recently (again) is because the other day, a (very) senior professor told me that he was upset about another colleague who doesn't cite his (the senior professor's work) when he should. He said that he wants his citation numbers to be as high as possible by the time he dies because "that's all we have" (as a legacy). I thought that was sad and disturbing, particularly coming from someone who has a large number of papers that have been cited more times than any paper of mine will ever be. I hope I don't feel that way when I am his (near retirement) age, even if it does make me happy when my papers are cited.
25 comments:
I start to be happy when citation n > 30 but the papers that I consider my 'successes' (for citations anyway) are n > 100. I would be happiER with at least a few n > 200-300, but I am not unhappy with some papers in the low three-digit range.
I've heard that for the nanotech field, one should have their h-index move up by at least 1 each year begining from the start of grad school. So 10 years after you started your PhD, your h-index should be at least 10. I go by that rule of thumb and as long as I stay on that trajectory, I'm quite happy and don't care about the number of citations any one paper gets. Personally, I think getting a paper over n = 100 is cause for celebration, don't know what kind of superstar Anonymous is.
Many of my mentors (very successful and some quite senior) have told me that when they are dying and taking their last breath, they will be thinking about their families and the relationships they made - and their professional accomplishments will pale in comparison to all that. I try to keep that in mind as I chart out my career as a young engineer/researcher...but hey, who doesn't want their work to be cited and considered important? I can't honestly say I'd be super happy if no one cited my paper, especially when I'm still trying to "make it"...but it's also good it keep things in perspective when thinking about "legacy" and what you want to be remembered for after you're gone.
I'm pretty young with not that much perspective but I can say this:
I have some publications and awards that I'm proud of...but as time passes by these become a line in my CV that blends in with the rest of it. But the personal experiences I've had while getting these publications and awards...I still remember the good memories I had with my colleagues and smile sometimes.
I quite liked the criteria "raise h index", it is nice when that happens. Unfortunately, my h index is only about 1/6 of the number of papers that I have published. So maybe my personal criteria could be somewhat more generous.
I'll have to wait too long to reach a happy n, so instead I think about a dn/dt that would make me happy. In my field, a good paper receives 2-3 citations per year. Reaching 4 citations per year (or more) would make me happy.
"What are the most important factors in deciding your personal minimum number of citations for happiness?"
Having more citations than the competition. :-)
I'm still waaaaaay off anything that could be considered a solid h-index - but the day I'm looking forward to is the day when one of my paper gets cited by one of the " big people " in my field for the first time.
So besides a quantity depended Happiness Index I guess there is a quality depended parameter that contributes to the overall That-makes-my-day Factor.
Another paper over 100 is great. Over 200 just means you're getting older...
And of course one notch on the h-index every year, although the speed tends to decrease as time goes by.
In my field we are quite happy if the number is >5. But it's hard/uncommon to get such point for most of the referred papers. when I am thinking about happiness index I guess for us it's more about how many invited talks at international conferences you get. That can really show how much appreciation there is for your work.
Another H index I learned Happiness = reality/expectations.
Does the h-index going up by one/year apply to all/most fields or only some? Can people give examples of fields in which it does/should apply other than in nanotech?
I am a very young scientist, therefore do not have any concrete h-index. In my field, a person having a >500 citations for a paper is considered a **the big shot** with h-index of mid-20's.
I think, that a citation count of 100 or more for a paper would make me happy. Getting to 100 would make want more I guess. Who knows :P
I'm with the person who said happiness comes from family and relationships and not citations. In fact, even though I'm very successful by outside measurements, I derive less and less satisfaction with the academic game lately. I want more time with the kid, not less.
I never cared for the number of citations for an individual paper. It had never even occurred to me to attach an emotion to it.
My research tries to identify big problems and anticipate work on them so in several instances citations did not start accumulating until six or seven years after publication at which time they quickly became highly cited papers.
In retrospect, if I had ascribed emotions to citation counts those would have been some very unhappy years.
I get a far greater kick out of a single person saying "hey I liked that paper" (meaning they actually read it and appreciated the work) than I get out of a large number of citations (meaning that I just managed to have the right keywords in there so that people found it in their literature search and read the abstract - if you're lucky).
Does the h-index going up by one/year apply to all/most fields or only some?
I've read it applies to physics and computer science as well. A normal productive scientist should have an h-index proportional to his/her academic age, so variance above (below) that is generally a sign of over-achievement (under-achievement respectively).
In my field, citations accrue slowly. I'm quite happy if my H-index is equal to or greater than the number of years since my PhD. This seems to be a good benchmark for the "successful" senior folks as well, many with H-indices around 30 or 40, but few much bigger.
Wow! I count citations as much as anyone, but the idea "that's all we have in the end" is a shocker.
It's a somewhat objective stat for the bean counters, and a pointer for scientists from other fields to quickly identify which of someone's work has been the most visible for any one of a variety of reasons.
I'd hope people evaluate their careers projecting their accomplishments all the way to impact on society and personal fulfillment.
I have no happiness threshold (and think thresholds are usually an artifice anyway, why try to be binary?). My unhappiness threshold is zero - I've often regretted the papers languishing without any, even if they were fodder for reports.
I agree that your colleague's comment is very disturbing and sad. I recently attended the 70th birthday party of my PhD advisor and was overwhelmed to be in the company of so many great people and scientists, all of whom had been touched in some way by his mentorship. THAT is the most important scientific legacy we can leave. Most of us will not win Nobel prizes or cure cancer, but the impact we have on the lives of others will live on long after we are gone.
citations are all we have as legacy? This is just plain sad.
Impact on the body of science goes so far beyond this. Trainees who have become scientists. Real influence of your work measured in a subsequent body of work that is rooted in yours, whether it leads to a lot of citations or not. The fact that people in some walk of life that doesn't generate research papers come up to you and say they use your work.
Citations are a pretty pathetic, irrelevant scorekeeping, field-size dependent way to think about your legacy.
I personally feel like a paper was "worth it" to me if it gets over 100 citations. But I think there are a lot of superfluous citations/journals in my field (life sciences) that inflate our citation counts relative to other fields.
I would also say that it may be worth reconsidering not just how we measure impact, but whether publishing in the traditional sense is really worth it at all. Each paper in my field costs costs probably something like $200K to $500K to produce, even relatively modest ones, when one factors in *all* the labor involved. Shepherding a paper through review is a fair amount of that cost, and takes up so much time that could be better spent elsewhere. Is this effort and expense really worth it for work that gets cited 3 or 4 times? Perhaps there are more efficient ways to disseminate the knowledge we generate to the world? I realize this is perhaps heretical, and there are certainly all sorts of idealistic arguments about all knowledge being useful, etc., but I personally think about these issues often for my own papers at least.
I should also mention that in my field (unlike a field like, say, math), results are often irreproducible or get "stale" relatively quickly, so I think it's easy to overstate the importance of a paper in terms of "adding to the sum of human knowledge"...
I am currently a graduate student. I was happy to learn that one of my papers is being cited before its even being published by my PI in a review he is writing.
I think that's pretty much about as low as the bar gets: I'm excited about self-citation.
*throws a party*
I didn't know about this h-index = years since PhD thing, and it makes me kind of happy because my h-index is slightly higher than my years since PhD.
My h-index (computed by Google Scholar) is almost exactly my years since PhD (30), but I don't expect it to go up much as I've not been publishing any good papers lately.
I will break 1000 citations on my most cited paper sometime later this year. That's not my best paper, just the one people who use the tool are asked to cite.
Blogger is AGAIN refusing comments with my gasstationwithoutpumps.wordpress.comid
I'm a baby in academic terms (about to finish my MS, starting a PhD this fall), so for me, any citation is exciting. After reading this post, I looked up my papers and discovered that one of them is up to two citations now, and am very pleased about that, so thank you for prompting me to go look! :)
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