How to judge the academic level of scientific researchers

Yingsheng Observation needs to judge the academic level of scientific researchers in many aspects such as applying for funds, selecting mentors, collaborators, and recruiting scientific researchers. In my opinion, the golden indicator for evaluating the academic level of scientific researchers is the size of their contribution to society, except for a few purely theoretical studies. However, contributions to society sometimes take a long time to show, and sometimes social benefit evaluation is highly subjective. Before the social benefits are shown, there are four levels of methods to evaluate the academic level of scientific researchers from high to low. This article only covers the field of natural sciences, and the fields of social sciences may be different. In addition, what is mentioned in this article is only a general situation, and special cases are not uncommon. For example, Yuan Longping's paper may not be very good, but I think he is one of the few world-class scientists in China because his research has created huge wealth for society.

The first method is peer review. Directly read his published articles and judge their academic value based on your own knowledge. This is the most accurate and reliable method. However, to be able to judge other people's articles requires two prerequisites: first, you must be a peer with the author, preferably a junior peer; second, your academic level is higher than that of the author, preferably one level higher. At least it's pretty good, not too far behind. Only in this way can you have the ability to evaluate other people's articles. The more advanced you are than the person being evaluated, the more accurate the evaluation will be. This is also the basis for journals to select reviewers, so being selected as a reviewer and editor by a well-known journal itself is recognition of its academic level. For undergraduates and laymen who lack basic knowledge and know nothing about the importance and novelty of the topic, or graduate students who know little about it, they are unable to make an accurate judgment on a document. If you do not have the ability to evaluate other people's articles, you can also refer to the opinions of other experts' peer evaluations of the article. Peer evaluations, even those by authorities in the field, are not absolutely correct. It can only be said that they have a high probability of being correct. When Einstein's theory of relativity was first proposed, it was said that only three people in the world could understand it. So if you use the peer evaluation method to evaluate Einstein, and if you don’t invite the three people who understand, the result may be that Einstein’s theory is nonsense. Why? Because their level is far inferior to Einstein. Of course, there is only one Einstein. If you don’t think you are Einstein, for those who deny authority, at least know that they are correct in most cases.

The second method is to look at the number of citations of SCI papers. Although this is a bit troublesome, it is relatively reliable, so we should master the basic search methods of SCI databases, especially the method of finding which SCI-included papers an author has published and how many times they have been cited. Specifically, enter the SCI database (WOS). This is its homepage URL: /sci-if/

The fourth method, which is also the most unreliable method, is to look at the number of published papers. Because the previous scientific research evaluation system only focused on quantity rather than quality, it resulted in a large number of low-level papers being published. These papers had very low impact factors and citation times. Many of them were divided into several publications. , or publish repeatedly. Therefore, those statements that “published XX papers” cannot truly reflect the academic level of the author.

Strictly speaking, the last three methods, especially the last two methods, are methods used by laymen. But in most cases there are not many experts, so it is often used, and the second method is relatively reliable.