Thread by @profmarkreed

When (and how) to write a highly cited versus a highly targeted paper.

Yesterday I recommended a colleague for promotion who had <30 citations across her 21 papers. She was researching a local but important issue and her targeted research and outreach had massive local impact...

Today my citations passed 20K but I still write locally targeted papers - my two most recent publications are targeted clearly to a UK (REF) and English (policy) readership, but their non-academic impact will (I believe) be substantial...

The key is to develop an impact plan for your paper rather than leaving it to chance fasttrackimpact.com/post/2019/03/1…. This is the impact vehicle for my REF paper led by @BellaReichard fasttrackimpact.com/im-writing-a-c…, and this is how I'm getting impact for the policy piece slideshare.net/MarkReed11/inf…

Having said that, writing the odd highly cited paper doesn't do your career any harm and you can learn how to target a paper to an international audience for academic impact the same way you target any audience. You just need to know what they value most...

To write a highly cited paper you need to create an evidence-based argument that demonstrates rigour, originality and academic significance in the context of your field or discipline

It might look a bit like this

And a good title helps...

See my full presentation here slideshare.net/MarkReed11/how… and here's my Google Scholar profile scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user…. But just because an uncited paper is under-rated by academics doesn't mean it can't be your most impactful work.

I know I'm going to get a lot of flack for this thread so I'm going to duck out of Twitter while the storm breaks! But hopefully some people will find some of this useful...