Publication Goal #2

After my paper was accepted I knew I still hadn't cleared the "real" scientist bar... the paper needed to actually be cited. I hope that I someday have enough papers/citations to not know/worry/care when they get cited; but right now I only have one paper. So I am going to know how many times it has been cited.

And it has been cited once! This is the bar I wanted to clear. Shortly after my paper came out, another paper was published in a "better" journal (by some standards) that had some similar results. I was somewhat nervous that the other paper would be cited and that my paper would disappear into obscurity. Now that my paper has been cited in a review paper, I can be optimistic that it might be cited in future papers - when the appropriate results are being discussed.

Citations are - in a way - proof that one has contributed to the overall progress of science. Or, that is how I choose to think about them. It is not that every important paper has many citations or that every paper that has many citations is important. But if I want my work to matter - to be medically or otherwise relevant - the only way to know it is happening is through evidence that other researchers are reading and using it. That is what citations are (in my naive mind).

Putting it out there

I first had a webpage around the time google was founded. Since then I have designed and maintained a variety of web pages - for student groups, EXO, surveys, petitions, and most recently the Undergraduate Women in Physics Conference. Unfortunately my technical ability to do things with HTML is not matched by any ability to design things that look nice.

For some time I have thought about making some sort of personal/professional website. I had imagined something that would be an HTML equivalent of my resume, and decided I could use it as an opportunity to learn the magical new world of HTML 5. I didn't start it for some time, but then the press coverage of my Cerenkov work made me realise how little control I had on the information available about me.

So I created a website for myself. It doesn't look as amazing as I would like, and doesn't have all of the functionality I would like. But it has my papers, talks, and activities. It is what I want the world to see of me.

But there is one problem, of course. It doesn't seem to show up in google searches! I have tried to link to it on my profiles (linked in, facebook) in a few places. But yet, it just doesn't show up in the Google results. I have google analytics running on it, which shows me what search terms ARE getting people there. For reasons I don't understand, the search phrases that have brought people to my website are "adc mapping osirix plugin", "stanford html template sandstone", and "stanford software".

Now I must find ways to actually make my page exist in the great Google database. Or, re-craft my career to be about adc mapping osirix plugins.