Difference between revisions of "Citation Competition"

Revision as of 09:21, 7 February 2008

Introduction

This is a little competition just for fun. It is only for my past/present postgrads and postdocs that are listed below. As you can see, year by year their ISI citation counts increase. I have put the winning figure in bold for each year. The rule is all papers by that candidate are included—even if papers were not written at this university. The idea is to encourage good writing to occur beyond these walls. The rules are that I only use ISI as the measure.

The Prize

The prize is $1000 for the person with the most citations in the year 2010. Be aware that even if you are a PhD student that graduates in 2010, you can still be the winner—it is possible to still beat the older guys...because citations have a certain half-life. I will probably award the prize every ten years from then on, so if you miss out the first time you can still catch up.

The Outcomes

The Secret of How To Win

• Always ask me if you have questions.
• Start writing a paper the day you start your PhD. If you write a really good review of your topic, it is a good way to start.
• Publish papers as you go along in every year of your PhD. It is a good discipline and makes writing your final thesis easier.
• When your thesis is written and being proof read by me, use that spare time to convert some of your thesis into papers.
• Always upload preprints of your papers either on the Los Alamos ArXiv or NEC Citeseer or both. This gives your papers visibility. Do this religiously.
• When writing a paper, use the introduction to provide a motivating to context. So it grabs the interest of the reader.
• When writing a paper the goal is for you to communicate ideas in the clearest way. It is not to show how clever you are with pages of obscure stuff that no one can understand. The more people that can understand your paper, the more it will be cited.
• To improve clarity always make sure the paper is proof-read many times. Do not rush it. Make sure myself and your other supervisors are happy with it. Get a friend on the desk next to you to proof read it. It helps if you use a friend who is not working on a totally similar topic, who can tell you if something in your paper sounds odd or unclear. Offer to proof read other people's papers.
• At conferences make sure you use all the lunch and coffee breaks for networking and making friends around the world. If you sit in a corner, you are totally wasting the opportunity of a conference.

External Links

• Los Alamos ArXiv
• NEC Citeseer