Success in academia is more than a citation count

In my work, faculty members and graduate students frequently ask me about demonstrating and improving their impact. Where should I publish? How do I boost my citations? And just as often faculty ask about how best to evaluate their colleagues, such as through promotion and tenure processes. One of the most common areas of uncertainty is the h-index. What is a “good” h-index? How do we use it to evaluate someone?

I am not opposed to such questions; indeed, I welcome them. It is encouraging when academics seek expertise on research impact and evaluation rather than assuming that widely used metrics provide a complete picture of scholarly value.

• Key questions to help universities measure societal impact
• Spotlight guide: Redefining success in academia
• An early career researcher’s guide to impact

As someone who studies research impact and evaluation, I often think about how academic work is assessed as well. Even among scientometricians, citation-based indicators are often treated as rough proxies for research impact. Yet the term “impact” has become diluted in this context. Impact generally refers to change or effects resulting from research: a shift in scientific understanding, the revision of established theories or consensus, the adoption of new practices or effects on policy, public health or society. Citations and related metrics are more accurately understood as indicators of influence – evidence that scholarly work has been noticed, referenced or engaged with – rather than proof that it has produced meaningful change within the research community or beyond it.

Goodhart’s law as it applies to impact metrics

The problem arises when we begin to treat individual metrics as proxies for success itself. Goodhart’s law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

In academia, we see this play out in subtle but important ways. Researchers feel pressure to maximise publication counts, target specific journals and pursue work that is more likely to generate citations. Institutions chase rankings that are often heavily influenced by publication and citation data. What begins as a tool for assessment gradually becomes both the goal and the currency of academic success. When this happens, we risk distorting the very behaviours we hope to encourage. Early career academics, in particular, may feel pressure to prioritise metrics-driven outputs in a competitive environment, sometimes skirting the edges of ethical behaviour to do so.

The problem with publication bias

Of course, consequences extend beyond individual academic careers, and those incentives have downstream effects on the rest of the research ecosystem. For example, publication systems often favour positive or statistically significant findings, creating what is known as publication bias, as research has shown. Yet null results can be just as important for advancing knowledge.

The challenge is not that impact has disappeared from academia, but rather that our systems for recognising it have become far narrower than the values that first drew many scholars to the profession.

Citation databases capture part of the picture (or, looking beyond citations)

Citation databases remain valuable for understanding collaboration patterns, emerging research themes and scholarly networks. However, they reveal little about how research informs policy, shapes public discourse or influences practice. Newer tools such as Overton and Altmetric help to fill part of that gap by tracking references to research in policy documents, news coverage, patents, clinical guidelines and other non-academic sources. While no metric fully captures research impact, these tools remind us that scholarship can matter in ways that citation counts alone cannot measure.

What metrics miss

While bibliometrics and altmetrics can provide evidence of research attention, engagement and impact, they are shaped by what they are able to measure, including which outputs are indexed, how attention is tracked and whose work is made visible.

As a result, these systems tend to favour well-resourced publishing ecosystems and English-language scholarship, disproportionately representing research from the Global North and commercial publishing platforms while under-representing regional journals and scholarship from the arts, humanities and social sciences, regardless of its citation impact. Likewise, research shared through local media, community partnerships, public talks, creative works or informal online discussions often falls outside measurement systems altogether.

In addition, incentives often reward rapid output and immediate impact, which can be at odds with team science and interdisciplinary scholarship, where meaningful collaboration takes time and impact is often greater, but realised over longer periods.

These nuances and limitations matter because impact is ultimately about change. Yet many of the most meaningful effects of research, from informing public decisions to strengthening communities and improving lives, are also among the most difficult to measure, especially at scale. As the maxim reminds us: not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.

Rethinking academic success

This is why many researchers and institutions are rethinking how academic success is defined and evaluated. One example is the Scope framework for research evaluation, a five-stage model that begins with a simple principle: start with what you value.

The framework encourages evaluators to identify their values, consider the context, select appropriate measures, probe for unintended consequences and continuously assess whether evaluation systems are achieving their purpose. In other words, evaluation should be guided by values, not the other way around.

This shift is particularly important because universities do not all share the same missions. Research-intensive, teaching-focused and land-grant institutions may define success differently, and evaluation systems should reflect that diversity.

This does not mean abandoning rigour or traditional measures. The challenge is ensuring that they remain indicators rather than becoming definitions of achievement. This principle is also reflected in global initiatives such as the Leiden Manifesto, DORA and CoARA, all of which advocate more responsible and pluralistic approaches to research assessment.

Stakes are high

The stakes are higher than many realise. When careers are judged primarily through narrow metrics, faculty experience stress and misaligned incentives, particularly early career researchers navigating competitive environments.

As someone who works at a land-grant institution, I am reminded daily that research exists in service of something larger than itself. The researchers, teams and projects that I encounter that make the greatest difference help local and global communities, solve problems, inform public decisions, improve professional practice and create opportunities. Some produce highly cited papers, others produce reports for public audiences, and many do both.

If we want universities and research institutions to address society’s most pressing challenges, we must create evaluation systems that recognise this full spectrum of contributions. After all, the value of research is not simply to be cited. It is in advancing knowledge and, often, making a difference beyond the academy.

Rachel Miles is an associate professor and assistant director for research information management and AI strategy at Virginia Tech University Libraries.

If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week, sign up for the Campus newsletter.