How to Become a Highly Cited Researcher: Insights and Strategies (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: I'm listed as a clairvoyant highly sighted researcher. In this video I will tell you how to become highly sighted. Research is like building a castle. Everyone will remember the king and queen who laid the foundation, while the workers who are just adding a few bricks to the walls won't be remembered. In between there can be some architects that are designing a part of the castle, like a tower for example, and they can also be remembered. To be more concrete, let's have a look at the introduction of a scientific paper. The first paragraphs are introducing the topic, and this is where the foundational works are being cited, in every paper on this topic. The authors of such papers are the kings and queens, and can get thousands of citations for their seminal work. The next paragraphs are motivating the subtopic that the paper is about, and the architects of that subtopic will be cited in every such paper. This can turn into hundreds of citations. Finally you have the list of closely related works, and these papers are cited for very good reasons, but they can only be close to a few papers, which means that they will only get a few citations. To become highly sighted you should try to be an architect. You must introduce new subtopics, or lead the research in the subtopic by making insightful research contributions that many want to build their work on. Remember that not every paper that you write can become highly sighted. You cannot only architect a tower, you also need to be one of those that lead the work in building it up. My point is that it is researchers who inspire you to research that get many citations. It is more important to take the time to write one really novel and insightful paper than ten papers that is not standing out in the crowd. Becoming highly sighted should never be the goal of research, but it is a sign of accomplishment. There is no immediate gratification in science. It takes a year to write a good paper, another year to get it published in a top-level journal, and then it can take several years before other people have the chance to read and cite it in their published papers. So that means that citation metrics are only important for professors, never for students. As a final word, don't try to take shortcuts by publishing in lower-medium-level journals that might be promising fast review times. That will only hurt your credibility and lead to less citations in the long run.