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How to be successful in academia (according to statistics)

Recently, for some reason I don’t remember, I happened across a paper on so-called hot streaks in academic careers. This led me down a rabbit hole into research on success in academia, of which there apparently is quite a lot, especially for the sciences.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found much on the humanities, and I suspect that many of these scientometric studies don’t translate well. They rely on citations and H-indices, which, as we all know, don’t work well for the humanities and often don’t index humanities books or reflect humanities practices in the same way. I still found it useful. It was interesting to see some hard data about success in academia (or at least in some parts of academia) even if the details differ in the humanities. I do suspect that, on a broader level, some of the patterns might hold.

I will share what I learned in this short post. I discussed the topic in more detail in another post about PhD advice and morning routines and what that has to do with writing and productivity advice, but that became very long-winded. As the key message relevant to this post might otherwise get buried, I wanted to extract and slightly reframe it here with a few caveats.

Caveats: Who gets to define what a “successful career” even means

One caveat is that this research focuses on top-performing scholars worldwide. That may not be what you’re aiming for. Many academics publish work that is never cited, and according to these metrics, many scholars have no measurable “impact.” Of course, these metrics aren’t everything. A lack of citations does not mean your work or life is pointless. I don’t buy that at all.

The research also tells us that many (or even most) people make a living in academia without being among the global top performers. They presumably live their dream of being in academia—though whether that life is enjoyable, given the stress, pressure, and publish-or-perish culture, is another question. That’s a topic for another post. There is also much discussion nowadays about alt-ac careers, and many people describe careers outside academia as more fulfilling and less stressful. I don’t want to contribute to harmful narratives that position alt-ac paths as failure.

Still, if staying in academia and having scholarly impact is something you want, then it’s useful to understand how impact tends to be distributed.

Impact as a key metric for being able to stay in academia

To stay in academia, you generally need to be relevant in some way. Doing research that is perceived as relevant—or that you can convincingly sell as relevant—is important. This seems quite obvious but when I first dreamt about a career in academia, I thought you simply had to be good at research and publish a lot. That’s a quite naive view of what is required to make it in academia. As discussed in my academic writing project and in the work of Joshua Schimel, it’s not enough to publish a lot.

Quantity matters, but if you want impact, if you want to be competitive for professorships, you also need to produce work that is seen as relevant. That often translates into citation metrics and impact counts.

Even if you are not on a professor track, you will likely be evaluated in terms of your relevance. Maybe your service makes you indispensable. Maybe your teaching does. But often, especially in research positions, the perceived relevance of your scholarship plays the key role. To be seen as “hot,” “up and coming,” or high-achieving, your publications need to be noticed. This is “measured” in citations or keynote invitiations. That often means engaging with research trends, positioning yourself strategically, and writing in a way that makes your work citable.

Joshua Schimel emphasizes that writing citable papers is key. There is also clear evidence that publishing in top journals (or even top-quartile journals) dramatically increases citation success. Looking at the CVs of highly cited scholars, this pattern seems to hold (but check if it does for your own field).

Writing a lot doesn’t mean much if you’re not cited

This whole conundrum is something I have recently reflected on for myself. I have written a lot, which is apparently a success criterion. But my work doesn’t seem to be getting much notice. Perhaps that’s because I’m positioned between the humanities and more citation-heavy digital fields. History of science and my specialisation in history of alchemy is quite a niche field. Maybe that explains why my work hardly gets cited. Yet I have recently been wondering what that means for my career and whether I need to change my strategy.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t trained to think in terms of citability or strategic relevance early in my career. Yes, I was told to include statements of relevance in article outlines and project proposals. But I didn’t truly understand how to do that well. I’ve discussed this at length in my academic writing project, so I won’t repeat it here. But relevance and impact (whatever that means) clearly matter.

The academic Matthew Effect builds on accumulated privilege, so grab what you can

At the same time, there are structural and unfair factors at play. One of the more sobering findings I encountered was that your first five years of publishing (starting from your first publication) largely determine whether you will become highly visible and successful, at least statistically speaking. If you want to become a top-performing professor, your early decisions matter enormously. If you’re very early in your career and considering if it’s worth going to what is perceived as a top (i.e. highly prestigious) university: it definitely matters if your goal is to stay in academia. Whether that’s a good thing or whether it will be worth the financial risk to do it in the end, I cannot answer for you.

Yet, the data suggest that ideally, you should publish early in a top journal, co-author with a well-known (and highly cited) scholar, and be affiliated with an elite institution. You don’t need all three, publishing in a top journal appears especially powerful.

Of course, this system is unjust in many ways. Publishing fees and institutional prestige reinforce inequalities. But the data simply show a strong Matthew effect: early success compounds. Those who are visible early continue to accumulate citations and recognition, possibly even with less effort. Below the visibility threshold, all your work has less impact and you quickly run up against time and energy limits trying to outperform your disadvantage. Conversely, those higher up get much more visibility for the work they do, even if they produce less of it. The system is rigged against you. Those who start lower in the hierarchy face much steeper barriers.

Because of publish-or-perish dynamics, visibility generates more visibility. Meanwhile, there is a practical ceiling to how much additional labor one person can produce. If you are already struggling for recognition, it becomes hard to break through. That’s why early positioning matters so much. If you can get ahead of the curve early, it becomes easier later. It may be worth deliberately and strategically maximizing these known success factors in your early career planning, as they do have an outsized influence on your chances of success.

If you didn’t do that or don’t have access to those things, don’t lose hope yet. Statistics describe tendencies, they may not apply directly to your life. But it’s important to recognize that the system is not neutral. The odds are not evenly distributed. It’s important to be realistic about it and figure that into your decision on how to proceed.

One encouraging finding concerns grant success. Researchers who win a grant are significantly more likely to win future grants, even compared to near misses. But interestingly, part of this effect seems behavioral. Those who narrowly miss out are less likely to apply again. Their future chances shrink not only because of external bias but because they self-select out of the competition. In contrast, those who win continue applying.

That, at least, is a factor somewhat within one’s control: persistence.

Don’t let the numbers discourage you: they don’t account for everything

All in all, I don’t want this to end on such a negative note. The numbers are scary, but there’s hope, too.

I feel that while I’m not that important, I have nevertheless clawed my way up despite not having any of those early success factors. I managed to get from a less prestigious institution into a more privileged one. I feel conflicted about complying to this rigged system but nevertheless, it was possible for me, which is encouraging.

I found that, counter to what those studies suggest, you don’t always need to comply with power. I weirdly benefited a lot from unusual decisions that people usually advise against.

“Don’t even think about wasting your energy on blogging”, many say. But I have a feeling that blogging on the LaTeX Ninja has given me visibility far beyond the sphere of interest of my digital alchemy work. I have, in fact, gotten many opportunities simply because people knew and liked me from that blog.

Then I did another thing people usually advise against: I founded an activist working group together with other early career scholars, working on topics of societal importance that had nothing to do with my actual research topic. This supposedly useless, side-tracking work continues to get me more attention and invitations to talks than my actual core research area. It even led up to me getting elected into the board of directors of my local (transnational) Digital Humanities association.

So I guess my overall message is this: know the statistics. Use all the information you can. But don’t let it make you think you’re doomed. Not everything is as the establishment proclaims. Sometimes people do prefer underdogs. (Yet this is not to say that I’m an underdog in a global perspective; I am very privileged overall and aware of it.)

But if you’re thinking about where to submit your next article, try to aim for the best journal possible. We live in an unjust world and it does matter, even if a world without the current exploitative publishing ecosystem would be nicer and more inclusive. Hold the already powerful professors accountable to advocate for that. Those who are hurt most by a system cannot be expected to change it single-handedly. Let’s stop trying to shame individuals into “doing better” and instead hold systems accountable for the harm they do.

That’s what I have for now. I hope this was helpful.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Sarah Lang (March 15, 2026). How to be successful in academia (according to statistics). Epigrammetry. Retrieved April 18, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15vj0


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