PSEXIT FAQs

PSEXIT: Acronym for "Psaraftis exit" (retirement)

Below are some FAQs related to Psexit, in random order:

Which has been your favorite research project?

At MIT, a project developing graphics software for mathematical programming courses, in the context of project Athena. It died a natural death after I left MIT.

At NTUA, the 3 EU projects that I coordinated:

Concerted action on short sea shipping

EU MOP project

FP7 project SuperGreen 

At DTU, project MBM SUSHI.

Which has been your favorite paper?

Psaraftis, H.N., “On the Practical Importance of Asymptotic Optimality in Certain Heuristic Algorithms,” Networks 14, No.4 587-596, 1984.

This paper did not get a lot of citations, but it has been my favorite. It was not funded by any project.

Which has been the best moment in your career?

Receiving tenure at MIT, one of the top universities in the world. That happened in 1985, six years after I started as Assistant Professor. Four years afterwards, I quit MIT to return to Greece.

Which has been the worst moment in your career?

Some cases in the port of Piraeus (1996-2002), in which I felt like been run over by a truck full of stones. Still, I managed to survive, and do something positive there.

What has been the most gratifying moment?

Not sure. There have been many, at MIT, at NTUA, and at DTU. Also the Piraeus stint was gratifying in retrospect, even though I would never want to do it again.

What was the biggest surprise of your academic career?

That in 10.5 years at DTU I would publish more papers than in all my previous (around 35) years at MIT and NTUA combined. Also I published 2 books. It was not planned. 

What will you mostly miss upon retirement?

Not sure, remains to be seen. 

What will you not miss?

The hectic pace of academic life including lots of business travel and particularly the pressing need to write research proposals.

Anything else we should know?

I am a big rail fan (since I was a child). Maybe I went into the wrong profession. 

Any more questions not covered in the FAQ set?

Send me an email at hnpsar@gmail.com and I will try to answer.

LINK TO ORCID

LINK TO WEB OF SCIENCE

LINK TO DTU ORBIT

LINK TO GOOGLE SCHOLAR

LINK TO SCOPUS

LINK TO BACKGAMMON BLOG

JUST CITE IT

Digging deeper into the recently released (Oct. 4, 2023) Stanford/Elsevier 100,000 top 2% scientists database can be fun. The selection is based on the top 100,000 scientists by c-score (with and without self-citations) or a percentile rank of 2% or above in their sub-field. The database actually contains entries for more than 200,000 people). See HERE.

I was happy to see myself again included in the database, together with other illustrious colleagues. My own primary sub-field is Logistics & Transportation (L&T), and I am globally ranked No. 37 for this sub-field on a career basis, and No. 25 on a single year (2022) basis. This is a marginal improvement vs previous years, and perhaps a surprise, given that (at least on paper) I have been working part time for about 2 years now. I am sure that this will deteriorate at some point, given my impending retirement from academia at the end of 2023, ie in about 2.5 months from now (stay tuned). 

Some additional information:

The number of scientists of 5 or more citations rose to 9,617,763 in 2022. Of those, 26,803 people have L&T as their primary sub-field. Of the 26,803, the number of L&T scientists in the database (excel) that one can download is 562, and those in the top 100,000 are 141.

Dividing 37 by 26,803 yields 0.00138, meaning that on a career basis I am in the top 0.14% of my primary sub-field. The number was 0.16% a couple of years ago, so I am more or less where I was then.

And now some additional numbers, which I produced by looking at the L&T subset of the excel that I downloaded (population: 562 people).

Scientists are ranked by the c-index, which is a composite index based on as many as 40 different citation data for each scientist.

For the 562 L&T scientists in the database:

1. The maximum c-index is 4.51, and the minimum is 2.75. Mine is 3.8, and I am at the No. 37 position according to this criterion.
2. The maximum number of published papers by an L&T scientist is 693, and the minimum is just 17. I have 167 papers, and I am No. 120 according to this criterion.
3. On a per year basis, the maximum number of papers per year is 26.5, and the minimum is just 0.5. My own number is 3.7 papers per year on the average (from 1978 to 2022) and I am No. 290 according to this criterion. Incidentally I know that this number is by no means constant, and that for me it is higher in recent years than it was in the past.
4. The self-citation factor (percent of one's citations coming from other papers authored or co-authored by the same person) ranges from 45% to 0.08%. My own number is 9.1%, and I am No. 334 according to this criterion (No. 1 is the 45%).
5. The ratio of the number of sole author papers divided by the number of total papers ranges from 91% to zero. It is zero because there are several people in the database who have not written a paper by themselves. My own ratio is 24%, and I am No. 84 according to this criterion.
6. The ratio of the number of sole or first author papers divided by the number of total papers ranges from 100% to 2%. There is in fact one author whose name is first (either alone or with others) in all of his/her papers! My own ratio is 33% and I am No. 190 according to this criterion.
7. The ratio of the number of citations of sole author papers divided by the total number of citations (excluding self citations) ranges from 98% to zero. Mine is 33% and I am No. 84 according to this criterion. Note that 33% is higher than the 24% shown in No. 5 above.
8. The ratio of the number of citations of sole or first author papers divided by the total number of citations (excluding self citations) ranges from 100% to 1%. Mine is 44% and I am No. 150 according to this criterion.
9. The wide ranges of the above numbers attest to the wide differences in the bibliometric profiles of the population of the L&T subset.

10. I did not have the time to produce the full range of higher order statistics, or investigate the secondary subfields, like I did a few years ago, see HERE.

    What's the importance of all this? I have no idea.

    
    

TABLE OF CONTENTS OF CITATIONS BLOGS HERE

PS I posted a subset of the above on FB and LinkedIn, both with the link to the Stanford article. The FB post was removed by FB a few hours afterwards, for allegedly violating FB rules on cybersecurity. Weird. The LinkedIn post was not removed.