A System for Predicting Scientific Impact Over Time? (2 of 5) (IMAGE)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

A System for Predicting Scientific Impact Over Time? (2 of 5)

Caption

This set of visualizations represents the career of a scientist as a line, where each bump represents the impact (number of citations) of a paper. The larger the bump, the bigger the impact. When looking at thousands of these lines we see that success is randomly distributed within careers -- the highest impact publication could be the first publication, could appear midcareer or could be a scientist's last publication. This random impact rule holds true for scientists who work alone, in groups, in different disciplines, in different decades, and for different lengths.

Credit

Image by Kim Albrecht, data image by Roberta Sinatra

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