An international research team led by Albert-László Barabási (Northeastern University) has just published a wide-ranging study of how the impact of a scientist’s oeuvre varies over the course of a career. To gauge a publication’s impact, the researchers considered the cumulative number of citations it received in the first 10 years after publication, a metric called c10. One unexpected discovery came when they analyzed the probability that a scientist’s nth paper was their most impactful one and found that all papers were equally likely to have the largest value of c10.
The flat probability distribution is in accord with the disheartening hypothesis that a scientist’s ability is immaterial to a publication’s success. But Barabási and colleagues found that possibility inconsistent with other trends in their data—for example, that scientists who pen specific papers with truly high impact are likely to produce other important work. Instead,...
