Dive Brief:

• A new report says that an individual scientist’s chances of landing a faculty job at an academic institution can be predicted easily, based only on that individual’s publication record.
• The most predictive factors are the number of publications, the impact factor of the journals where the papers are published, and the number of papers that receive a higher-than-expected number of citations.
• One of the report’s authors says the results of the study suggest that people are promoted based on merit, but if the predictive factors hold true, some of the “phenomenal and ahead-of-their-time scientists” will be passed over because their work wasn’t published in high-impact journals and didn't receive a higher number of citations.

Dive Insight:

The report was published in Cell Press' Current Biology journal, and an individual’s predictive score can be calculated at www.pipredictor.com. The researchers used publication record data for more than 25,000 students. Besides predicting who is likely to land the faculty jobs, the researcher’s model can also predict how long it will take.