What It Takes. Austin, J. Science, 344(6190):1422, June, 2014.
doi  abstract   bibtex   
[Excerpt] Not long ago, Science Careers posted a widget – you can find it at http://scim.ag/1pwIaAF – that lets early-career scientists calculate the probability that they'll someday become principal investigators (PIs), on the basis of a few standard publication metrics. [...] The Science Careers widget is less accurate than the full-bore model, but it has the virtue of focusing attention on a handful of the most important parameters. [...] 1. Be male. The widget's probability plot displays two lines: red for women and blue for men. The blue line is above the red line across the whole range of probabilities, no matter what variable you display on the ordinate. [...] 2. Be selfish. Do you value collaboration? Too bad: In my testing, an extra first-author publication increased the odds of becoming a PI by 17\,%; it would take eight middle-author publications to get a comparable boost. [...] 3. Be elite. According to our widget, the institution you train at doesn't matter much – unless you're at one of the top 10 universities in the Academic Ranking of World Universities. [...] 4. Publish in journals with high impact factors. If you've signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (http://am.ascb.org/dora/), or you just don't think a metric designed for a journal should be used to evaluate individual scientists, avert your eyes: Journal impact factor has a strong influence on a scientist's probability of attaining PI-ship. [...] You might say, then, that the impact factor of the journals you publish in matters more than your own personal impact factor. [...] If we want young scientists to remain idealistic, then we need to figure out how to do a better job rewarding the things that really matter: discovery (often as part of a team) and solutions to society's most compelling problems.
@article{austinWhatItTakes2014,
  title = {What It Takes},
  author = {Austin, Jim},
  year = {2014},
  month = jun,
  volume = {344},
  pages = {1422},
  issn = {1095-9203},
  doi = {10.1126/science.344.6190.1422},
  abstract = {[Excerpt] Not long ago, Science Careers posted a widget -- you can find it at http://scim.ag/1pwIaAF -- that lets early-career scientists calculate the probability that they'll someday become principal investigators (PIs), on the basis of a few standard publication metrics. [...] The Science Careers widget is less accurate than the full-bore model, but it has the virtue of focusing attention on a handful of the most important parameters. [...] 

1. Be male. The widget's probability plot displays two lines: red for women and blue for men. The blue line is above the red line across the whole range of probabilities, no matter what variable you display on the ordinate. [...]

2. Be selfish. Do you value collaboration? Too bad: In my testing, an extra first-author publication increased the odds of becoming a PI by 17\,\%; it would take eight middle-author publications to get a comparable boost. [...]

3. Be elite. According to our widget, the institution you train at doesn't matter much -- unless you're at one of the top 10 universities in the Academic Ranking of World Universities. [...]

4. Publish in journals with high impact factors. If you've signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (http://am.ascb.org/dora/), or you just don't think a metric designed for a journal should be used to evaluate individual scientists, avert your eyes: Journal impact factor has a strong influence on a scientist's probability of attaining PI-ship. [...] You might say, then, that the impact factor of the journals you publish in matters more than your own personal impact factor. [...]

If we want young scientists to remain idealistic, then we need to figure out how to do a better job rewarding the things that really matter: discovery (often as part of a team) and solutions to society's most compelling problems.},
  journal = {Science},
  keywords = {*imported-from-citeulike-INRMM,~INRMM-MiD:c-13242797,authorship,gender-biases,impact-factor,inequality,research-funding,research-metrics,science-ethics,scientific-communication,technocracy},
  lccn = {INRMM-MiD:c-13242797},
  number = {6190}
}

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