A sprawling tree earns credit for producing fruits, cleansing the air, and offering a habitat for birds and small animals. But include the forest that it populated via seed dispersal, and its real influence extends beyond measure.

Scientists face a similar situation. The h-index value measures a scientist’s success based on the number of publications and citations, but that score ignores a researcher’s percolating influence. For instance, an effective group leader motivates a generation of potentially successful future scientists. On the flip side, a researcher with high accolades might create a toxic lab environment and demotivate junior researchers, deterring them from pursuing science. But those gains and losses of future discoveries are not balanced in their impact score sheet. 

In a recent study, researchers found that tweeting about a paper does not increase the number of citations.1 However, does that mean sharing information is futile? A researcher inspired to take up a new project after reading a fascinating paper or one who used a study method to troubleshoot an experiment might disagree. 

When biochemist Jennifer Doudna, CRISPR pioneer at the University of California, Berkeley, spoke about the origins of CRISPR at a press conference, she credited her colleague, microbiologist Jillian Banfield, who first informed her about this bacterial immunity system and urged her to work on it. Doudna went on to characterize the CRISPR system together with Emmanuelle Charpentier, researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Pathogens, Berlin, and the duo won a Nobel Prize for their discovery in 2020. Their landmark paper has almost 20,000 citations, and CRISPR-based therapies have made their way to the clinic already.2 But how should scientists quantify Banfield’s influence for sowing the seed? 

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  1. Branch TA, et al. PLoS One. 2024 Mar 20;19(3)
  2. Jinek M, et al. Science. 2012;337(6096):816-821.