Your First Publication

[someth1ngAus]

Hi

I'm in my honours year in Australia (it's a year of full-time research for your degree) and I'm basically expected to make 2 publications this year (will probably stay with the group a bit longer) and I think it's achievable - I have been with this group for a year already. However, the chemistry I'm doing doesn't seem that impactful and most publications I see on the topic get 20-30 citations or less and kinda feel like I'm wasting my time doing something that doesn't matter and am I just overthinking it?

The question I want to know is how impactful was the first publication you made?

[Eigen]

20-30 citations is honestly quite a lot. 

Generally, a good citation rate is around 1/citation per year, with older papers tending to get more. 

Last statistics I saw, something like 50% of papers were never cited (granted, this was not specifically in chemistry), and another 25% were only ever cited once.