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December 27, 2016

2016: a year in review

This is it for the year. Here's a look back at my 2016, by the numbers [1]:

Papers published or accepted: 4 (journals or equivalent)
Number that were "gold" open access: 2
Number coauthored with students: 2
Cumulative fraction of my papers available online, for free: 0.91 (+0.04 over 2015)
Pre-prints posted on the arxiv or biorxiv: 7
Other publications: 1 invited Perspective in Science (due out in early 2017)
Papers currently under review: 4
Manuscripts near completion: 6
Rejections: 1 (-87% over 2015)
Number of papers making up those rejections: 1
New citations to past papers: 2347 (+18% over 2015)
Projects in-the-works: too many to count
Half-baked projects unlikely to be completed: already forgotten
Oldest project I still intend to finish: project started in 2009
Oldest project completed this year: project started in 2013 (progress!)
Papers read: >132 (about 2.5 per week)
Number of open browser tabs containing papers to read, right now: 17
Number of Dropbox folders created for research projects: 6
Fancy prizes won: 1 (in network science; I am humbled) [2]

Research talks given: 13
Invited talks: 13
Visitors hosted: 4
Conferences, workshops organized: 2
Conferences, workshops, summer schools attended: 4
Number of those at which I delivered a research talk: 4
Number of times other people have written about my research: >14 (mostly about faculty hiring networks and gender)
Coolest external mention of my research: this, in an OSTP presentation at the White House (around the 1h35 mark)
Number of interviews given about my research: 3
Coolest interview: for a British TV science documentary (due out in 2017)

Postdocs advised: 0
Students advised: 11 (8 PhD, 2 MS, 1 BS; 2 rotation students)
Students graduated: 1
Thesis/dissertation committees: 10
Number of recommendation letters written: 13 (+30% over 2015)
Number of those that were for a tenure case: 1
Summer school faculty positions: 1
"Short" courses taught: 2 (both on networks)
University courses taught: 2
Students enrolled in said courses: 51 (15 undergrads and 35 grads)
Number of problems assigned: 73
Number of pages of lecture notes written: pleasantly few
Pages of student work graded: >3069 (roughly 60 per student, with 0.04 graders per student)
Number of class-related emails received: >1320 (+230% over 2015)
Number of instances of stupid plagiarism: 2

Journals for which I am an associate editor: 2 (same as 2015)
Manuscripts handled as an associate editor: 44 (+63% over 2015)
Manuscripts refereed for various journals and journal-equivalent conferences: 13 (-13% over 2015)
Number of those mainly refereed by my students and postdocs: 5
Manuscripts or abstracts lightly refereed for workshops and non-CS conferences: 57 (-32% over 2015)
Conference program committees: 5
Fields covered in my reviewing: Network Science, Computer Science, Physics, Computational Social Science, Social Science, and Physics

Words written per referee report: 502 (-31% over 2015)
Referee requests declined: 69 (-10% over 2015)
Journal I declined the most: Physica A (7 declines, 0 accepts because; the winner by a large margin)
Program committee invitations declined: 4
Number of referee reports I owe anyone, right now: 0
Number of NSF panels I sat on: 1
Number of NSF panels I declined: 3
Grant proposals reviewed: 9 (-40% over 2015)
Fraction that I thought deserved to be funded: 0.50
Fraction that were, I believe, actually funded: <0.20

Grant proposals submitted (as PI or coPI): 4 (totaling $2,249,999)
Number on which I was PI: 3
Proposals rejected: 3
New grants funded: 1 (totaling $550,000)
Proposals pending: 0
New proposals in the works: 2

Emails sent: >10281 (+13% over 2015; about 28 per day)
Emails received (non-spam): >18,854 (+2% over 2015; about 52 per day)
Fraction about work-related topics: 0.93 (+0.02 over 2015)
Fraction that was spam from my university: 0.03 (-0.01 over 2015)
Fraction about research funding: 0.08
Emails received about power-law distributions: >109 (about 2 per week)
Number of emails in my inbox, right now: 22 (+5% over 2015)
Oldest-dated email in my inbox, right now: July 2011 (I am ashamed)

Unique visitors to my professional homepage: 27,500 (-8% over 2015)
Hits overall: 81,000 (+4% over 2015)
Fraction of visitors looking for power-law distributions: 0.40 (+0.02 over 2015)
Fraction of visitors looking for my course materials: 0.21 (-0.07 over 2015)
Unique visitors to my blog: 6,500 (+14% over 2015)
Hits overall: 10,700 (+19% over 2015)
Most popular blog post among those visitors: The trouble with modern interdisciplinary publishing (from 2016)
Blog posts written: 2 (+0% over 2015)
Blog posts conceived but never written down: 2 (I think?)
Number of twitter accounts: 1
New followers on Twitter: >817 (+25% over 2015)
New tweets: 59 (-71% over 2015)
Retweets of my tweets: 1036 (-6% over 2015)
Average number of retweets per original tweet: 17.6 (+97% over 2015)
Most popular tweet: one about David Hu's 'confessions' as a scientist

Number of computers purchased: 0
Number of cars purchased: 0
Netflix: too many to count
Books purchased: 3 (-25% over 2015)
Books read: 2 (-50% over 2015)
Songs added to music library: 49 (-91% over 2015)
Photos added to photo library: 1983 (+20% over 2015)
Photos taken of my daughters: >1520 (about 4 per day)
Jigsaw puzzle pieces assembled: <1000
Major life / career changes / decisions: 0
Number of offspring: 2 (+0% over 2015)

Fun trips with friends / family: 7
Half-marathons completed: 0
Steps this year: >1,624,615 (about 4500/day, and -25% over 2015 [3])
Walking distance this year: 803 miles (a very bursty average of 2.2/day)
Trips to Las Vegas, NV: 0
Trips to New York, NY: 0
Trips to Santa Fe, NM: 5
States in the US visited: 7 (CA, FL, GA, IA, NC, NM, TX)
States in the US visited, ever: 49
Foreign countries visited: 2 (Korea, United Kingdom)
Foreign countries visited, ever: 31 (+0% over 2015)
Other continents visited: 2
Other continents visited, ever: 5
Airplane flights: 33 (+43% over 2015)

Here's to a great year, and hoping that 2017 is even better.

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[1] This is where I put my now annual acknowledgement that I don't post much on this blog anymore. This continues to be mainly because of being busy with other things, some fun and some tedious, that come with being a university professor, and with having a family. But, as I've said in past years, I still like the idea of having a blog, where I can write things that are too long for Twitter, but too informal for an academic paper. However, it does seem that it's time for me to relocate this blog to another place, and set the CS Department at the University of New Mexico free of the burden of running its server.

[2] It's not a fancy prize, but I am nonetheless humbled that someone has created an official Wikipedia page for me.

[3] Apparently, I walked a lot more when I was on paternity leave, last year.

posted December 27, 2016 04:07 AM in Self Referential | permalink

Comments

I'm looking forward to your 2017 commentary piece!

Just curious: how did you calculate your publication number? You linked to Google Scholar, but that gives a different number, so I guess you are counting something different than what they list as 2016 citations.

Posted by: Anonymous at December 28, 2016 09:33 AM

I track my citations manually, so I just looked at the totals at the beginning and end of 2016 in my notes. Google Scholar profile pages incorporate bibliographic and citation information on a pretty long delay relative to the GS search engine, so it's more accurate to use the latter than the former if you want up-to-date information. (The delay is up to a month, I think; the "final" 2016 citation count for a profile won't update until something like February 2017.)

Posted by: Aaron at December 29, 2016 06:56 AM