Measuring publishing success?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

I know the mere thought of measuring success in philosophy might be unacceptable to some, but here’s where the question came from, at least to me. I just started my first job, a non-TT job. I have under 50 citations from 5 publications in leiterian journals. My brother-in-law, who has a non-TT job in one of the STEM fields, on the other hand, has over 30 publications and 200 citations. This is not coming from him, he’s totally a nice guy, but from the elders at the family table, belittling me because of my publication volume and citation count.

So generally, what would be a decent publication volume and citation count for philosophers? I know the answer will vary according to sub-disciplines and the “quality” of the publications. Or rather, how can one explain on the dining table that one’s doing ok-ish in research?

I'm really sorry to hear that this reader was belittled by family members. One reader submitted the following reply, which I entirely agree with:

I think you should avoid such dinner table conversations. If people do not understand that there are disciplinary differences, then you are going to find yourself engaging in some very unproductive conversations. My own career, especially the early stages, made no sense to my father who own and ran a business.

However, if the OP does want to respond to their belittling family members, the first thing they should know, I think, is that publication rates are vastly different across fields:

Second, citation rates are also stunningly high in many scientific fields, especially when compared to the humanities. Like, look at the following graph (lifted from here). The humanities are the line at the far bottom.

As the following graph demonstrates, this is at least in part explained by co-authoring, which is common in STEM but not humanities fields, especially philosophy:

So, even if one does measure success in terms of publication and citation rates, the OP has absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, particularly if they have nearly 50 citations just a year or two into their first job, as this seems to me spectacularly good for such an early point in one's career. That being said, it might be good to actually answer the OP's question, if not to satisfy their family members, but instead give them some idea what kinds of publication and citation rates are considered decent or good for the purposes of (A) getting a tenure-track job, and/or (B) tenure. This, in brief, is because I've heard that tenure committees do not always understand these kinds of disciplinary differences either, sometimes using publication and citation rates from their own fields to evaluate candidates for tenure and promotion in fields with very different standards. 

So, then, in philosophy, "what would be a decent publication volume and citation count for philosophers" at particular stages of their career (i.e. on the job market, when coming up for tenure, etc.)? I too imagine that answers to this question are different at different places (SLACs, R1s, etc.), so it might be good to hear about some of these differences in the comments section!

Comments

[Publication requirements at R1 schools]

This is a great thread. It would be useful to know whether there is a minimum number of articles accepted/published in top journals at R1 schools when coming up for tenure.

[anonymous associate professor]

@Publication requirements: this varies too much to be useful, but also a lot of elite schools don't have explicit # of publication tenure requirements (though there's a lot of variation in that too, my experience/talking to people suggests that at least very generally, the less elite the school, the more explicit the tenure requirements will be). There are also e.g. schools like mine (R1, fairly elite) where our department does have explicit tenure requirements, and wants to be somewhat permissive in who they tenure, but many tenure denials happen at the administrative level, not the department level, so those tenure requirements don't mean much. I just don't think there's any kind of one-size-fits-all answer to your question. (Also: lots of elite and elite-ish schools seem to put a huge amount of weight on external letters--so it's not about placing things in top journals, but rather about what experts think about your work. Of course those things may be correlated, but definitely aren't always.)

[systematic]

Unfortunately, the problem is more systematic than conversations between family members at the dinner table. Here is another example. For some international scholars hired by US institutions, there are different types of applications for a green card. Some types are way faster than others. Understandably, how quickly you can acquire a green card depends on how important you are to your field. And the deemed "objective" measurement of your importance to your field is publications and (especially) citations. Those who are in charge believe that the more your works are cited, the more recognized you are in your field.

Since most of the International hires are in STEM fields, the number of publications and citations in STEM becomes the default standard. Of course those who are in charge do not know much about disciplinary differences; they only care about numbers. It is incredibly difficult (if possible) for a philosopher to use those faster options to get a green card. I have friends who have excellent publications in philosophy but have to find all possible ways to have their works cited. They also have to find good attorneys who want to help (which means time, money, etc.) unless they want to just wait for a longer time.

[Chris]

One thing that I didn't see Marcus mention (maybe too obvious, given the data you've posted), is that I have the sense that citation rates WITHIN philosophy also vary a lot by sub-discipline. That is, if you work in e.g, an area of philosophy of science or bioethics with any "overlap" with say, biology or psychology or health sciences, this can significantly boost the number of citations you receive, since you also have a pool of folks in other disciplines to potentially cite you (and sometimes these disciplines are much bigger: after all, there are MANY times more biologists than philosophers of biology... )

On the other hand, if you work in some area of "philosophers philosophy" - perhaps abstract topics in metaphysics (not "applied" or "social" metaphysics) or abstract areas of logic, an obscure (unpopular) area of history of philosophy, etc. the average number of citations might be significantly lower.

I'm at an R1: to address Marcus' question in bold: I'd agree with the anonymous associate professor that there are no general rules - at least not at our University. If your outside letters are really strong, and you publish in good places, you're fine, even if you have little to no citations; even if you don't have very many pubs. This depends a bit on your subarea (see above). Of course, it is still true that it can be harder to make this case about citations metrics to other departments at the University, and so having a lot of citations or pubs when you have a less strong file otherwise (so-so outside letters, etc.) could certainly help you get tenure in the eyes of faculty from other departments. A lot depends on how much various Deans and such trust your department and their judgment, in these "borderline" cases. The same point holds with quality vs. quantity - philosophers typically have a lot fewer pubs than say, economists, and one has to make a case about these differences. Of course, at some point, the quantity is probably too small, even with a lot of citations, for the department to make a credible case.

By my sense is that it isn't too hard to convince the other departments that the citation averages vary a lot between disciplines. But maybe we've been fortunate.

Would also be interested to see any data (PHIL PAPERS?) on citation average differences across different subdisciplines within philosophy.

[Newly Dr.]

I just wanted to add that it sounds like you've got a lot of citations to me. Having roughly 10 citations per publication after (presumably) only a few years seems like a pretty amazing achievement in philosophy. Maybe I'm miss-calibrated badly, but I can only dream of having a citation count that high (I'm currently at 1 citation for 2 papers, although they've only been out for a year or so).

[r53]

I second Newly Dr. Having 40+ (I assume) citations from 5 publications strikes me as quite good, and better than many, though it depends a little on when they were published. Your elders have no clue. It's ridiculous comparing citations/publication numbers between a humanities and a STEM scholar. 200 citations for 30+ publications is actually on the low side (though it'll vary hugely btw biomedicine and, say, non-applied maths). As for 5 vs 30 pubs, how many of the 30 are single-author? If multi-author, in how many is he first author? If you work in a well-oiled lab, it's not particularly difficult to appear in the middle of many multi-author papers.
Heads up, OP, you're doing just fine!

[Nick Byrd]

PhilPeople users can see their own stats about not only publication quantity and citation, but also downloads—each ranked by percentile.

Those data can help provide within-discipline context/comparison as well as alternative metrics (e.g., a paper may be impactful according to its downloads even if not it is—or is not yet—impactful according to its citations).

I am not suggesting, of course, that these quantitative metrics are perfect. There is surely noise, bias, and other stuff in the data, but unless there is no signal whatsoever in those data, then they are more informative than nothing (and more quantifiable for people/institutions who demand that).

[Nick Byrd]

Altmetric is—well—an alternative metric of impact. It tracks papers' social media shares, news coverage, Wikipedia citations, blog mentions, etc. Altmetric is good for picking up on early signs of impact that precede citations in peer-reviewed books and journals (since the latter take longer to publish than what Altmetric tracks).

The main features of Altmetric are free for authors and readers to use. (Note: I find that a DOI is among the best ways to find papers via Altmetric.)

Of course, the same caveats about discipline differences in citations, volume, co-authorship, etc. probably apply to Altmetric as well as they do to raw citations or citation indexes.

[Nick Byrd]

Academic social networks like ResearchGate provide independent measures of "interest" in and number of reads of one's work (as well as more traditional metrics like citation). It also provides users comparisons with others in the department and institution (e.g., in case one wants to show that one has about as much impact as already-tenured people in one's department, college, etc.).

Some evidence suggests that using free, generalist academic social networks like this (as opposed to discipline-specific networks like PhilPeople or paid networks like Academia.edu).

Having one's work shared on (non-academic) social media is also an early predictor of later citations. I discuss this and various other findings and comparisons between platforms like Twitter, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, etc. in Why Make an Academic Social Network Profile (and a Website)?(https://byrdnick.com/archives/11393/personal-websites-academic-social-networks-how-to)