Quantifying the evolution of individual scientific impact
Despite the frequent use of numerous quantitative indicators to gauge the professional impact of a scientist, little is known about how scientific impact emerges and evolves in time. Here, we quantify the changes in impact and productivity throughout a career in science, finding that impact, as meas...
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| Veröffentlicht in: | Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Jg. 354; H. 6312 |
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| Hauptverfasser: | , , , , |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Sprache: | Englisch |
| Veröffentlicht: |
United States
04.11.2016
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| ISSN: | 1095-9203, 1095-9203 |
| Online-Zugang: | Weitere Angaben |
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| Zusammenfassung: | Despite the frequent use of numerous quantitative indicators to gauge the professional impact of a scientist, little is known about how scientific impact emerges and evolves in time. Here, we quantify the changes in impact and productivity throughout a career in science, finding that impact, as measured by influential publications, is distributed randomly within a scientist's sequence of publications. This random-impact rule allows us to formulate a stochastic model that uncouples the effects of productivity, individual ability, and luck and unveils the existence of universal patterns governing the emergence of scientific success. The model assigns a unique individual parameter Q to each scientist, which is stable during a career, and it accurately predicts the evolution of a scientist's impact, from the h-index to cumulative citations, and independent recognitions, such as prizes. |
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| Bibliographie: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
| ISSN: | 1095-9203 1095-9203 |
| DOI: | 10.1126/science.aaf5239 |