I usually write about social connection and loneliness, but every few months I return to research methods. This is one of those moments.

I often see researchers posting celebratory messages on LinkedIn when they reach a citation milestone (e.g., 10,000 citations). Recently, researchers have been posting screenshots of their Clarivate citation counts. I understand the appeal, especially if you work so hard for years. And academia treats these numbers as professional currency. But there is a fundamental problem: The evidence clearly shows that citation counts are not indicators of research quality.

Multiple studies demonstrate weak or absent relationships between citation counts and research quality (see e.g., Nieminen et al., 2006). In one analysis of 448 psychiatric journal articles, researchers found no association between statistical errors and citation counts. Journal visibility was the strongest predictor of citations, not methodological quality.

Reproducibility tells........

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