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Career Paths

Quantifying the evolution of individual scientific impact


Average citations after 10 years
h-index
Individual Q
No. of Papers

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PROJECT

How does impact change over a scientific career?

Does impact, arguably the most relevant performance measure, follow predictable patterns?

Can we predict the timing of a scientist’s outstanding achievement?

Driven by these questions, we studied the evolution of productivity and impact throughout thousands of scientific careers. We reconstructed the publication record of scientists from seven disciplines, connecting each paper with its long-term impact on the scientific community as quantified by citation metrics. We found that the highest-impact work in a scientist’s career is randomly distributed within her body of work. That is, the highest-impact work has the same probability of falling anywhere in the sequence of papers published by a scientist. It could be the first publication, appear mid-career, or emerge last. This result is known as the random impact rule.

In this visualization, we show the random impact rule in all its power. You can explore careers in different disciplines, rank scientists according to different career parameters, or select a subset of them. You will always find the impact peaks occurring all over the place, from the beginning of a career on the left to the end of a career on the right.

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DATA

We use two types of data sets:

(i) The publication record of physicists publishing in the journal family Physical Review from 1893 to 2000, which was provided by the American Physical Society (APS).

(ii) A combination of Google Scholar career profiles and Web of Science (WoS) data.

In the physics section, we show 2887 physicists, whose publication records span at least 20 years, who have at least 10 publications, and who have authored at least one paper every 5 years, according to the APS data set. In the biology, chemistry, cognitive science, ecology, economics, and neuroscience section, we found over 7,000 scientific profiles, based on the WoS data. Note that the APS data set contains only citations within the Physical Review corpus. For this reason, the specific citation numbers reported by APS are systematically smaller than the citations reported by the WoS database. Citation-based measures of impact are affected by three major problems: (i) citations follow different dynamics for different papers, (ii) the average number of citations changes over time, and (iii) citation count is subfield-dependent. To overcome (i) for each paper, we show the cumulative number of citations the paper received 10 years after its publication as a measure of its scientific impact. We can correct for (ii) and (iii) by normalizing citation counts by the average citations of papers published in the same year. Because corrections (ii) and (iii) do not alter conclusions about the APS data set, we report results without normalization for physics. For other disciplines, we use normalized citation counts instead. Note that the normalization is discipline-dependent, and the same paper might be reported with different normalized citation counts in two disciplines.

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PAPER

Paper from Science Journal

Paper as PDF

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VIDEO

Credits

Mauro Martino, Kim Albrecht, Roberta Sinatra and Albert-László Barabási

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TEAM

Science

Roberta Sinatra, Dashun Wang, Pierre Deville, Chaoming Song, Albert-László Barabási


Interactive Visualization

Kim Albrecht

Thanks to Jonas Parnow, Mauro Martino, Paul Heinicker and Isabel Meirelles for all the suggestions, help and criticism thoughout the process.


Video

Mauro Martino, Kim Albrecht, Roberta Sinatra and Albert-László Barabási

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Press information and images: Download Press Kit

Selected Press Coverage:

​Wired
See how the most influential science comes in waves

Scientific American
The Science of Success in Science

FlowingData
Randomness of scientific impact

FastCoDesign
Scientific proof that it's never too late to make it big

New York Times
When It Comes to Success, Age Really Is Just a Number

Science News
Hey scientists, how much of your publication success is due to dumb luck?

Nature News
Scientists can publish their best work at any age

Design Boom
kim albrecht's interactive graph visualizes the 'science of success'

Full list of press coverage

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Contact per eMail:

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Press information and images:

Download Press Kit

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LINES

Line
Publication record of a scientist.

Dots on the line
Publications of the scientist

Height of bumps in the line
Number of citations after ten years for the corresponding paper.

Blue bump
Highest impact paper of a scientist.

Height of line
Number of citations after ten years.

From left to right, we arrange the first to the last paper of a scientist, ignoring their timing of publication.
The position of the highest impact paper of a scientist can be with the same probability, anywhere in her sequence of papers – it could be the first publication, could appear mid- career or could be a scientist’s last publication. In other words, impact is randomly distributed within a scientist’s body of work, regardless of publication time, order in the sequence of publications, discipline or groups of scientists selected. This result is named “random impact rule”. Check the paper for more details!

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SORT

Click to reorder scientists according to different career parameters. Order is from highest at the top to lowest at the bottom. Order according to:

Citations
Total number of citations in a scientist’s career.

h-index
A scientist has index h if she has h papers with at least h citations.

Individual Q
A novel parameter characterizing a scientist's sustained ability to systematically turn her projects into high (or low) impact publications.

Number of Papers
How many papers a scientist has published during her scientific career.

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FILTER

Click on the histogram to filter scientists. You can use multiple filters at the same time. Click anywhere to remove the filter.

Filter according to:

Average citations after 10 years
How many citations a scientist’s paper received on average after ten years of publication.

h-index
A scientist has index h if she has h papers with at least h citations.

Individual Q
A novel parameter characterizing a scientist's sustained ability to systematically turn her projects into high (or low) impact publications.

Number of Papers
How many papers a scientist has published during her scientific career.

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SCIENTIFIC FIELDS

The 10,000 scientific careers span different disciplines: physics, ecology, economics, neuroscience, chemistry, biology and cognitive sciences. Select a discipline to explore scientific careers in that field!

Careers look different in each discipline, with more or less pronounced valleys and peaks of impact. However all of them show that the highest impact paper is random in a career: the random impact rule!

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