Do I need Nature or Science papers for a successful career in science?
One of the unspoken rules in research is that a successful career in science is only possible with one or more papers with an impact factor above 10 or higher. This belief creates a lot of peer pressure among young scientists and might even be one of the causes of increasing numbers of scientific fraud cases.
However, is it true?
To answer whether you need high-impact papers for a successful career in science, it is crucial to get a very clear idea of what “a successful career in science” means for you.
It might be straightforward:
If you want to work and succeed in an environment where high-impact papers are necessary, you must have high-impact papers.
Interestingly, PhD students and postdocs are often unaware in which contexts impact factors play a role – and where not!
There is a lot of debate about whether impact factors measure anything useful to define scientific quality, and there are multiple suggestions for alternative ranking systems.
In order to make the right decisions during your career, you need to understand which bibliometric markers are relevant for a career in science.
Here, I want to describe some of the societal effects of the “impact factor culture” in science:
HIGH IMPACT FACTORS ARE THE “CURRENCY OF FAME” IN ACADEMIA
High impact factors are the “currency of fame” in science because they lead to invitations to give invited talks and become session chairman during scientific meetings, become member or chair of scientific committees, become a reviewer for or editor of famous scientific journals, and get much more press coverage after a publication.
Similarly, labs with high-impact factor publications often attract more excellent and ambitious candidates for open positions. Finally, scientific prizes are given mostly, if not always, to researchers with high-impact publications.
HIGH IMPACT FACTORS LEAD TO MORE PUBLIC FUNDING IN ACADEMIA
Undoubtedly, one or more high-impact factor papers will increase the chances to get future funding. Funding is often given on the assumption that “previous performances predict future performances.”
In the many selection committees (for grants or positions) I had the honor to participate in, impact factors were always used as very strong arguments because they are so easy to measure and can be listed, calculated, and compared between candidates. Scientific expertise, motivation, and scientific potential are much more challenging to evaluate.
HIGH IMPACT FACTORS MAY BE LESS IMPORTANT TO GET INDUSTRY FUNDING IN ACADEMIA
For companies, impact factors quite often play a minor role. They help build a scientist’s reputation since they may be an indicator of quality. However, quite often, expertise in a specific domain, experience with certain techniques and models, and personal relationships over a longer period are much more critical in getting industry funding for research project(s) in academia.
HIGH IMPACT FACTORS LEAD TO MORE INTRAMURAL FUNDING IN ACADEMIA
In most Western countries, impact factors are critical elements in evaluating the research output of an academic institution. Thus, they are vital to justify current and future government funding.
Impact factors may also substantially influence the position of universities in international rankings. Therefore, most, if not all, Western research institutions included impact factors and grants (which are often also partially based on previous impact factors) in their list of key performance indicators (KPI).
Therefore, intramural (=internal) funding in research institutions is often used to stimulate and promote research, leading to higher impact factors.
HIGH IMPACT FACTORS LEAD TO BETTER JOB CHANCES IN ACADEMIA
Due to the mechanisms described above, candidates for postdoc or professor positions in research institutions have higher chances of getting hired in a competitive environment – because previous performance is considered a predictor of future performance.
Interestingly, in smaller research institutions, the majority of professors quite often have no publications with very high impact factors. Thus, without a doubt, you can become a professor without Nature and Science papers.
HIGH IMPACT FACTORS DO NOT NECESSARILY LEAD TO BETTER JOB CHANCES IN THE INDUSTRY OR PUBLIC SECTOR
PhD students and postdocs often overestimate the significance of the impact factors of their publications for a job in the industry or in the public sector. Striking research from ECOOM shows that there is a considerable mismatch of the PhD students’ expectations and the real needs of the industry. Quite often transferable skills such as being a good team player are much more important to get a good job in the industry sector than research skills and scientific knowledge.
DO I FIND A JOB IN SCIENCE WITHOUT HIGH IMPACT FACTORS?
Interestingly, 97% of all PhD holders do NOT find their job in academia. The good news is that you are most likely to find a job elsewhere, for example, in the industry sector, the public sector, NGOs, or teaching.
Thus, the impact factors of your publications may be less important than you think – but being lazy will be punished in most cases (especially when the previous supervisor is asked as a reference for a future position).
A PhD with just a few low-impact publications will have a bad start to finding a position in any research environment (academia or industry).
Nevertheless, there are multiple jobs where impact factors of previous publications do not play any role, such as journalism and other jobs outside the research context.
In summary, choose consciously and decide whether high-impact factor publications are essential for your very personal concept of a successful career in science.
Recommended reading
The following articles may also interest you:
- How To Write Faster: 19 Efficient Ways To Finish My Publication
- 10 simple strategies to increase the impact factor of your publication
- 28 Tips to Get More Citations for Your Publications
- What is a substantial contribution to a paper?
- Should I have senior authorships as a postdoc?
- Should I aim for co-authorships on high-impact papers?
- Should I aim for multiple co-authorships to extend my publication list?
- Should I publish negative results, or does this ruin my career in science?
- I have a fake author on my paper – what should I do?
- What is the best publication strategy in science?
Article is very interesting to researchers. While this is true that publishing in high impact journals means novel findings on the subject but most of new discoveries were reported in average impact journals. At least for judging the work of researchers there shouldn’t be a criteria of publishing in high impact factor journals. The novelty of work done and its contribution to knowledge are more important in assessment.
In many cases high-impact journals publish very novel and high quality research, however, in some cases a first authored publication in Nature or Science doesn’t neccesaraly mean a high performance from the researches, for example, let suppose that a team of geologist take rock samples from an old craton and surprise! the rocks are the oldest ever found, a Nature paper, but not because of the high performance, just because of the luck of sampling a rock that happen to be the oldest ever found, if 100 other teams have took that sample (maybe they took one a few meters away)they would have find the same, sometimes the sample, not the brain of the scientist is the thing that worth the high-impact article.
Watch “Match point” by Woody Allen (the last scene) 🙂
One does not have to be clever, wise, rich, intelligent. It is just enough to be lucky. Even in science 🙂
Good luck to everybody!