7.6.5 Argue for quality by association

Fifth, if you have only a few citations in either ISI or Google Scholar, it might be worth tracking each of them down to see who is citing your work and in which outlets. It is more impressive when many of your citations occur in the top journals in your field or if some famous academics in your field cite your articles. Some of the fame and quality image of the journals and of the academics citing your work might rub off on you in the eyes of your evaluation committee.

This brings me to the sixth and final strategy. If you have very few citations, you might need to focus on the quality of the journals that your work appeared. Whilst in general, this is not appropriate as some papers in top journals never get cited (see Chapter 1 for a discussion on this), on average papers in top journals get cited more than papers in lower-ranked journals. Thats why they have higher Journal Impact Factors.

Therefore, if your work has been published in high-impact journals, you can make the case that it is more likely that your work will be highly cited. In addition, you should of course make the argument that these journals have generally higher quality standards for the work they publish and a more rigorous review process. However, thats a quality argument, not a citation impact argument, which is what I am focusing on in this book.