By James Hartley

This note compares the citation rates for publications written by the author alone with (i) those written by the author and fellow colleagues and (ii) those written together with undergraduates. Although the citation rates for publications written by the author alone, or with colleagues, are higher than those obtained for papers written with undergraduates, the data suggest that some teacher-student papers can make a substantial contribution to the research literature.                                                                                                       

Introduction

As an academic author I often wonder whether or not my papers with undergraduates are cited as often as my papers with colleagues.  On the one hand, colleagues are often more experienced and generally more familiar with academic writing and publishing than undergraduates.  On the other, undergraduates in the UK sometimes author papers arising from the research that they carried out in their final year supervised by academic staff.  To answer this query I used the website Google Scholar to examine a sample of how often my single-authored publications were cited with respect to (i) those written with colleagues and (ii) those written with undergraduate students. Continue reading →