\u201cThe pleasure of work is open to any one who can develop some specialized skill, provided that he can get satisfaction from the exercise of his skill without demanding universal applause.\u201d<\/p>\n
-Bertrand Russell in The Conquest of Happiness\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Although academics are no different from scientists in that their pursuits are typically independent of interpersonal relations, they do aspire to be successful\u2014and measuring success in academia is not as objective as, for example, determining the concentration of a given chemical in a solution or using the Likert scale to identify personal preferences. So, how is success to be measured in academia, which lacks the convenience of a balance sheet that can clearly reveal the success or failure of a business?<\/p>\n Some visible signs of success\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Some not-so-visible signs of success\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n As academics continue to work in their chosen field and acquire particular expertise, that expertise can be in demand outside the academia, and such demand too is a mark of success.<\/p>\n Quantifying success and impact\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The signs listed above are the more traditional means of judging success in the academia. However, times are changing and, as purse strings tighten and demands for accountability become more strident, academic success has to be quantified: the demand for \u2018impact\u2019 CVs in the academia (Andrews 2022), the Altmetric score <https:\/\/www.altmetric.com\/audience\/researchers\/>, the amount of funding secured, and the number of doctorates awarded under one\u2019s guidance are some of the metrics being used to measure academic success. Whether this is as it should be or, References\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThe pleasure of work is open to any one who can develop some specialized skill, provided that he can get satisfaction from the exercise of his skill without demanding universal applause.\u201d -Bertrand Russell in The Conquest of Happiness\u00a0 Although academics are no different from scientists in that their pursuits are typically independent of interpersonal relations, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":45761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2382],"tags":[2678,2671],"new_categories":[],"new_tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-4066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-around-the-web","tag-mental-health-in-academia","tag-stories-of-success"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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\nas I had argued once (Joshi 2014), whether scientists themselves should devise more scientific means to measure success, is another matter.<\/p>\n\n