How to measure a Professor's standing/respect in field?

[ak48]

Hi all,

 

I'm trying to decide between 2 programs and obviously the PI is going to be a huge part of the decision. Aside from visiting them and 'getting a vibe,' how do you determine how respected a given professor is in his/her field?

 

I'm not too familiar with the prestige level of science journals, and have really little to go by other than size of lab (indicative of funding prowess) and tenure status.

 

How would one get a relatively objective evaluation of a professors standing within his/her field? I believe their own graduate students would be biased.

[ShiningInShadows]

One option is to look at what kinds of presentations they do at conferences (assuming they do). It's not a sure-fire guide, but I know the conferences I go to it usually takes a certain calliber of respect (popularity) to end up doing those.

 

It's a good question, I wouldn't know myself if not for having someone who has a foot in the door on these things (my current boss is very well connected).

[selecttext]

The only criterion you need to concern yourself with are number of publications, quality of journals published in and number of citations. If you want to know if the professor is a jackoff, talk to his current and former graduate students.

Edited March 26, 2013 by selecttext

[ak48]

The only criterion you need to concern yourself with are number of publications, quality of journals published in and number of citations. If you want to know if the professor is a jackoff, talk to his current and former graduate students.

 

thanks for the information. i was sort of curious about if there is a metric to "quality of journal" other than asking somebody how the feel about it. is there such a metric as "times cited" that's easily available (for a given journal, as well as professor)? is such a number an accurate count of status?  

 

i'm wary because at least with tv/movie/music ratings, most popular/sold certainly does not mean best quality.

[Queen of Kale]

If you are in a science field you can get reports of your potential POIs that show number of publications, average citation per publication, and impact factor or "h-index".  That might be what you're looking for.  But be aware if your POIs are in different fields it can be a bit like comparing apples and oranges.  For instance one of my professors has published twice as many papers as another but each paper has been cited on average about a third as much.  You could read a great deal into this but one field has shorter papers on average, which can mean both more papers and fewer citations.  So try to keep that in mind.

[ak48]

If you are in a science field you can get reports of your potential POIs that show number of publications, average citation per publication, and impact factor or "h-index".  That might be what you're looking for.  But be aware if your POIs are in different fields it can be a bit like comparing apples and oranges.  For instance one of my professors has published twice as many papers as another but each paper has been cited on average about a third as much.  You could read a great deal into this but one field has shorter papers on average, which can mean both more papers and fewer citations.  So try to keep that in mind.

that's pretty much what i wanted, thanks!

 

i'll look more into it.

[Deadmeat]

One minor thing is when publications are from. I'm talking how ACTIVE are they now? I've been turned off by some very good POI because they havn't updated the website in 5 years, don't reply to emails, and clearly when spoken at interview they didn't have much going on in there lab at the moment. These were older professor's though who I think were just on autopilot, BUT if I just looked at publications/prestigious of the work they blew everyone else away since they had so many top pubs for so many years prior.

 

Just a thought.

[selecttext]

have you ever been on google scholar? if you search for your POIs by initials and last name, most of their bibliography will come up with a pretty good estimate of the number of times the papers were cited. Use this metric as a back of the envelope way of comparing the professors. Check out the number of citations and the frequency with which they have been publishing in the last 5-10 years. You want someone who is currently active. As for the number of times cited, it is really good and not common at all for a paper to have >100 citations in the last 10 years. Also look to see if they publish in top journals. Nature and Science are two to look for. You can figure out how good the journals are in google by typing "JOURNALNAMEHERE" "IMPACT FACTOR". Impact factors >4 are a good sign >8 even better. Of course most of this is arbitrary but it's a pretty quick and dirty way to make an impression. 

 

It is also possible in some search databases to get the professors' H-score , which is a metric combining all of the above. I think that web of science will generate one??? I know that google scholar does for authors that signed up for them to.

[tarrman]

I tend to use the h-index criterion. The really well known professors have an h-index around 60. I think anything above 30 demonstrates they are well known in their field.

 

Another good way to see if a Professor is well-reputed is to look at the title of their professorship. These are honorary titles that precede "Professor", and they usually indicate the professor is well-respected in their field. But not having a title doesn't necessarily mean the professor isn't well known.

[Cookie]

It is also possible in some search databases to get the professors' H-score , which is a metric combining all of the above. I think that web of science will generate one??? I know that google scholar does for authors that signed up for them to.

 

You can find a prof's h-index very easily with Web of Science database. 

Simply do a search with author name. From the results list, choose "Create citation report" link.  You will get a lot of useful data including: published items/ # of citations in each year, and of course the h-index.

Just be sure to remove the wrong articles from the results list, if that author has a common name.

[tarrman]

Hey guys just found another great tool for determining a professor's reputation, and it's an accredited source.

 

The Institute for Scientific Information publishes a list of researchers whose publications are most often cited in academic journals over the past ~10 years. The list is organized in to multiple disciplines (CS, Math, Physics, Engineering, etc.), and those given the distinction in a particular field are among the top 250 most cited researchers in a specified time period. More info about the list can be found here on its wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Scientific_Information#ISI_Highly_Cited

The link to the actual list can be found here: http://highlycited.com/browse/

The data for this list was compiled between 2000 and 2008. I suggest looking up professor's names instead of the discipline, as the fields you can search by are very broad; one of my POI's is listed on here under mathematics even though he is a professor of ECE.

[fuzzylogician]

The best way to get a feel for how a certain professor is viewed in your field is to ask others what they think about him/her. This will not give you an objective answer by any means (for that people above have suggested publications and the h-index) but you'll certainly get very interesting responses. If someone is well-known, graduate students at your current school should know the person at least by name. Maybe they've seen the person present at a conference or met them at a visit and can offer stories of how the interactions went. Professors will know more, and if you ask strategic questions you could get information that will be helpful. You want to ask how X is regarded in the field, what X currently works on (if your advisor knows), if your advisor has seen X give a talk and how they came across, and if they can think of previous students of X. All those things will give you some indication of what X is like. You could then just ask what X is like, but you might not get an honest response. Still, it might be worth asking. Take rumors and personal anecdotes with a grain of salt -- people have opinions about things they know nothing about all the time!

 

Also, graduate students can often be very forthcoming. We don't want to have someone join our lab/department who will be unhappy and drag everybody down. I personally will not straight up say something negative about my professors (at least not in an email and before I know you) but there are ways of asking questions that can get that information across. In particular if the question is just about prestige, that's easier for students to talk about. Just ask and see what happens, and again take the replies with a grain of salt.

[snowshoes]

Hi all,

 

I'm trying to decide between 2 programs and obviously the PI is going to be a huge part of the decision. Aside from visiting them and 'getting a vibe,' how do you determine how respected a given professor is in his/her field?

 

I'm not too familiar with the prestige level of science journals, and have really little to go by other than size of lab (indicative of funding prowess) and tenure status.

 

How would one get a relatively objective evaluation of a professors standing within his/her field? I believe their own graduate students would be biased.

 

Lab size may not be the best metric.  It implies they (should) have adequate funding to support, but it doesn't necessarily mean they are respected in their field.  The most important thing is how you get along with them - we all know stories of supervisors from hell.

 

Asking their current graduate students is very important.  Make it known that your conversation is "off the record" and that you want to know about their strengths and weaknesses with respect to interpersonal and professional skills.  If a graduate student isn't happy you will definitely hear about it.  Of course their opinions should be taken with a grain of salt and may not reflect reality, but you want to get an idea of how your potential supervisor interacts with his students.

 

I am in a small field and know quite a few researchers, so figuring out what others think of someone is pretty easy.  I know of somewhat sketchy researchers who have high H-index scores, big labs, lots of papers being pumped out, etc., but you couldn't pay me enough to work in their lab.  It's tough, but use a combination of suggestions made in this thread, definitely talk to their graduate students, and go with your gut.  Being part of a prestigious lab is good for your "pedigree", networking, resources, etc., but at the end of the day you will be spending several years with your PI and want to enjoy yourself as well.

[TakeruK]

I don't think there is such a thing as a surefire objective measure of a prof's success. Metrics like h-index and impact score are good ways to broadly divide profs into categories (e.g. famous, well known, unknown etc.) but as a google search of these metrics will tell you, there are some biases, especially against young, up and coming profs. I think these metrics are like GPAs and GRE scores -- they provide useful information but I wouldn't use these metrics to directly compare two people with similar scores.

 

I would strongly rely on the subjective opinions of people you trust. Before making my decision, I met individually with several people I trusted (former advisors, senior students) and basically went through my top choices with them and asked their opinion. I wouldn't solely rely on the opinion of one person, so it's important to ask around and see what people have to say. I attended some conferences before and during application season so when you talk to other students at these events, the conversation usually turn to grad school applications when they find out that I'm applying to PhD programs. When I discussed the profs/programs I was considering, people generally share their thoughts about the profs and schools and I factor in those opinions too.

 

However, I think one very important thing is not just how famous/well-known/successful the prof is, but how famous/well-known/successful the prof can make you! A superstar prof can be great at doing their work but terrible at advising. I would actually try to look up the papers that are coauthored by the prof in question and one of his/her grad students (ideally, the ones where the student is first author). Check these out -- is the writing quality good? Are they published in good journals? Are they interesting results? Do they have a lot of citations or does no one really care? Also if the prof is older, check for trends in his/her research -- did they start strong but have slowed down a lot in recent years?

 

The advantage of having a superstar prof is that you want to do superstar research with him/her and get your name associated with theirs. But this is only possible if the prof is doing superstar level research WITH their students! 

[GuitarSlayer]

One oddball way is to ask people outside of his/her field if they know of your POI.  If they say "who?" it's not necessarily bad, but if they have a good/bad rep outside the field, it says a LOT about them.  The google scholar thing is a nifty trick, but you also might want to read a few of these articles and consider whether you jive with this person's outlook.  If he/she makes you tilt your head and go "wait, wut?" think before committing.  You have to be with this person for 5+ years - it's like a marriage, and a divorce won't be pretty.