Academic milestones: reaching 100 citations

When I opened Google Scholar this morning to look at some papers, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I had reached a milestone that seemed unattainable a few years ago: 100 citations of my papers.

Although it feels good for a young researcher, I am well aware of the arbitrary nature of that metric. In fact, I am against the idea of judging scientists solely on the basis of a single statistic, such as their citations or the H-index. And of course, the number of my citations is strongly influenced by one single paper published with an acknowledged American research team. 85 out of the 102 citations, to be precise :).

I expected to be more thrilled when this finally happened, but the excitement has been overshadowed by my recent rejection from a dream graduate school. The number did not impress the admissions committee, as it turned out. Or is it just human nature that once we achieve one goal, our minds are already set on the next one? Nevertheless, this is yet another illustration of why such statistics aren't worth paying attention to.

This was, however, a great moment that caused me to reflect on all of the people I'd worked with and all of the opportunities I'd been given over the years. I took the time to send thank you emails to all my mentors, which is why this milestone is so significant: I could never achieve it on my own, only in collaboration with others. And this is a genuine reason to celebrate!