How many citations are actually a lot of citations?

In a previous blog post, I suggested to my younger colleagues that while they should not care so much about the impact factor of the journals they published in (as long as these journals are well-read in their respective fields of research), they should care quite a lot about these papers being cited, and cited by others not self-cited!

A few months ago, I was listening to the introductory talk of for a prestigious award from our national organization when one statement hit me: a physicist with 2000 or more citations is part of the 1% most cited physicists worldwide. There might have been a bit more to that statement but let’s work with it.

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The tyranny of the top science journals?

Are journals like Science, Nature and the like giving too much importance to themselves to the point of distorting the scientific process? A Nobel prize winner seems to think so (from The Guardian)