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‘Precocious’ early-career scientists with high citation counts proliferate

Researchers have questions about how so many authors have racked up a large number of citations so quickly, although some of those authors are honest overachievers.
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  1. Alix Soliman
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The number of ‘precocious’ scientists — those who become top-cited authors early in their careers — has surged in the past few years, according to an analysis1 of the publishing records of hundreds of thousands of scientists.

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Nature 637, 525-526 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-04006-9

References

  1. Ioannidis, J. P. A. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.10.14.618366 (2024).

  2. Czeisler, M. É. et al. Morb. Mortal. Wkly Rep. 69, 1049–1057 (2020).

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