Mission
Another day, another paper, and the world is counting on you again. Your mission is to estimate the impact of research in competitive game modes!
How to Play
Battle
Two papers. Pick the one with higher yearly citations. Harder comparisons (similar counts) award more points.
Guesstimate
One paper. Estimate its average yearly citations. Closer (log-scaled) means more points. Streaks multiply rewards.
Challenges
Mixed game mode with special collections: conferences, institutes, topics.
Compete on the leaderboards. Use #hashtags to create groups; for example events, friends, institutes.
Background
Citations are used to measure how much a research project has influenced its field. More citations suggest greater impact. But citation counts don't tell the whole story. They can be shaped by many factors: the discipline, the journal, the reputation of the authors, or simply being in the right place at the right time. That's what makes guessing them so tricky. How many times will a recent article be cited in the next few months? How many citations has a particular landmark study already received?
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Analysis details
Journal groupings
random
- any journal
- filtered for topics Genetics, Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, Biotechnology, Synthetic Biology, Systems Biology, Computational Biology
- abstract length > 50 words
- last 3 years.
25 popular journals
- Nature, Nature Genetics, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Methods, Nature Cell Biology, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, Nature Microbiology, Nature Medicine, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Immunology, Molecular Systems Biology, Nature Communications, Molecular Cell, Cell, Cell Stem Cell, Developmental Cell, Cell Systems, Cell Reports, Science, Science Advances, EMBO Journal, Genes & Development, RNA, Elife - equal number publications from each
- topic Biology
- abstract length > 50 words
- last 5 years.
cell/nature/science
- Cell, Nature, Science - equal number publications from each
- topic Biology
- abstract length > 50 words
- last 5 years.
Data Source
Publication metadata and citations are sourced from OpenAlex, an awesome free and open catalog of scholarly papers, authors, and institutions. It is made by OurResearch, a nonprofit dedicated to open science, supported by Arcadia and Navigation Fund. Some publishers do not share abstracts openly, or actively restrict their use, but it’s the best openly available data. Thank you OpenAlex & funders.
Related Games
There are fun AND educational games. There is for instance Guess the Correlation, where players guess Pearson coefficients from data plots, games like Eyeball testing geometrical abilities, or games like Wikipedia racing where players navigate information quickly. And there are 'Games with a Purpose', where human intuition is gamified to solve complex problems. For example citizen science like Foldit for protein folding, Eterna for RNA design, and Zooniverse a general platform. Perhaps the first gamification of research impact was the Guess the Journal Impact Factor Challenge (Simmons & Raj, 2017). It had players predict journal impact factors from paper titles. This was extremely difficult, probably because of the wide range of citations that papers from a given journal can have.
About me
As a molecular biologist, I’ve seen how much weight is put on citations. This game explores that topic. I am passionate about open science and improving policies in academic research. But this is just for fun, with no hope or ambition :) It's a hobby project to learn about citation counts, gamification, and web development. Grateful to all testers and supporters: MM, GC, SB, PW, IL, AS, MS.