Number of citation & quality of research?

[hummm]

I was fooling around with the google scholar, which shows the number of citation of each article, and came up with a question.

Do the number of citation of a particular researcher's publications (esp first author publications) speaks to the quality of the research that they do? For example, i was looking up two junior faculty's name (those who got their phd in similar time around 2009/2010). One person has few first author publications that was cited 100-200 times while another has 15-20. What does this difference tell you?

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[WisNeuro]

Doesn't say much without context. Someone can do high quality research in a "not hot" field and not get cited all that much. Another person can do mediocre research in an "hot topic" area and get cited dozens of times per article.

 

[CheetahGirl]

I was fooling around with the google scholar, which shows the number of citation of each article, and came up with a question.

Do the number of citation of a particular researcher's publications (esp first author publications) speaks to the quality of the research that they do? For example, i was looking up two junior faculty's name (those who got their phd in similar time around 2009/2010). One person has few first author publications that was cited 100-200 times while another has 15-20. What does this difference tell you?

Hey there,

Are you trying to get us to do your economics homework, again?! If so, that's not cool.


Do the number speak to the quality of the research? What do you think? I think two researchers propagate their research at different rates. That's for sure. I would have to know more. Like what is the topic: Breast Cancer and ALS? Breast Cancer is usually associated with other cancers so the rates of research could be 100-200 more publications than most. Versus, say, ALS, which specific to the disorder, hence requiring closer, longer-term, comparative studies, then I could see 10-20 really novel benchmark manuscripts (that blow many things out of the water).You may need more information? I would.