A second look back in the crystal ball

I wrote the bulk of this post this post five years ago, back in 2017. Ten years ago, a paper came out in Nature that claimed to predict... the future! At least, it claimed to predict one part of my academic future, namely, my h-index:

At the time the paper came out, there was an online calculator. It hasn’t succumbed to link rot: it’s still there! (Remember, the preceding sentence was written in 2017.) I entered in the following values then:

• Current h-index: It was 8 in 2012 (according to Google Scholar).
• Number of articles: 24 (I only counted my original technical articles).
• Years since first article: 20 (then; my first paper was in 1992).
• Number of distinct journals: 20.
• Number in “top” journals (a.k.a. the glamour mags): 0.

The program predicted my h-index now, five years later, would be 13. It got it exactly right, which I mentioned in a 2017 post.

Next, to schedule a post with this graph for 2022. We’ll see how close it is.

[Wakes up in 2022, sees post, checks Google Scholar]

PI predictor said in 2012 that my H-index this year would be 21. Google Scholar says it’s...

22!

I exceed expectations, woohoo! And it’s even better than the 2017 prediction, which said I would only have an h-index of 18.

It’s a good thing I checked back in 2017, because the online PI Predictor page seems to have finally succumbed to link rot.

Related posts

Gazing into the crystal ball of h-index

A look back in the crystal ball

References

Acuna D, Allesina S, Kording K. 2012. Predicting scientific success. Nature 489: 201-202. https://doi.org/10.1038/489201a