Stop Posting Your Citation Count
There's a better way to signal research quality than citation counts.
Posted November 23, 2025 | Reviewed by Gary Drevitch
I usually write about social connection and loneliness , but every few months I return to research methods. This is one of those moments.
I often see researchers posting celebratory messages on LinkedIn when they reach a citation milestone (e.g., 10,000 citations). Recently, researchers have been posting screenshots of their Clarivate citation counts. I understand the appeal, especially if you work so hard for years. And academia treats these numbers as professional currency. But there is a fundamental problem: The evidence clearly shows that citation counts are not indicators of research quality.
The Evidence Against Citations
Multiple studies demonstrate weak or absent relationships between citation counts and research quality (see e.g., Nieminen et al., 2006 ). In one analysis of 448 psychiatric journal articles, researchers found no association between statistical errors and citation counts. Journal visibility was the strongest predictor of citations, not methodological quality.
Reproducibility tells an even more troubling story. A 2021 Science Advances paper examined major replication projects in psychology, economics, and general science journals and found that papers that failed to replicate were cited approximately 16 times more per year than papers that successfully replicated. Even after replication failures became public, the citation advantage continued. Only about 12% of post-replication citations acknowledged the replication failure .
Studies examining the h-index show similar problems. Research tracking highly-cited scientists across biology, computer science, economics, and physics found that the h-index's effectiveness as a measure of scientific reputation has declined substantially. The measure showed strong correlations with scientific awards in the 1990s and early 2000s, but by 2019, its predictive power had dropped to essentially zero in some fields.
Higher-impact journals don't necessarily publish higher-quality work. Analysis of top social psychology journals show that journals with higher impact factors tend to publish studies with lower statistical power—the opposite of what we’d expect if citations tracked quality.
In short, citation counts reward visibility, novelty, and "interesting" results—not methodological rigor.
What Citations Really Measure
Citations reflect attention , not quality. Many well-documented forces distort citation counts:
The Policy Consensus: Stop Using Citations
Many scientific organizations have reached the same conclusion. The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) —signed by more than 2,000 institutions—explicitly states:
Do not use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles, to assess an individual scientist's contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions.
The Leiden Manifesto similarly argues that quantitative indicators should support, not replace, expert judgment.
Several national systems have already changed course:
The message is clear: Citations do not equal quality.
A Better Indicator: TOP Factor
If citation counts are uninformative, what should researchers highlight instead?
One promising, even though still imperfect, alternative is the TOP Factor , developed by the Center for Open Science. Rather than measuring attention, TOP Factor measures whether journals implement practices that make research transparent and verifiable.
Journals are scored (0–29) across standards including:
Thousands of journals and organizations have committed to the underlying TOP Guidelines, and thousands of journals have been rated. Unlike citations, the TOP Factor reflects actual methodological safeguards.
An early- career researcher publishing in journals with high TOP Factors signals a commitment to transparency and reproducibility. A senior researcher with enormous citation counts but consistently low TOP-score journals signals something else entirely.
Academic culture still pressures researchers to highlight citation metrics. But each time we publicly celebrate them, we reinforce incentives that push the field toward attention-seeking rather than rigor. Social media offers an easy place to shift norms. Instead of posting, "I hit 10,000 citations," imagine posting:
"This year I published in journals with an average TOP Factor of 18—committing to transparency and robust methods."
That kind of signal reflects something meaningful about research quality. And it helps nudge the field toward rewarding practices that actually improve science.
Citations measure visibility. TOP Factor measures verifiability.
If we want better science, it's time to celebrate the latter, not the former.
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Hans Rocha IJzerman, Ph.D., is Founder and Director of the Annecy Behavioral Science Lab (ABSL) in France and is a Research Affiliate at the University of Oxford.
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