In academia, vanity fraction is a measure of the fraction of academic’s total citation count that are self-citations. In addition, average vanity, is the average number of self-citations in papers published by the academic. Vanity Index in academia, checks the measures of your academic vanity (based on how often you cite your own papers).
Vanity metrics are good for feeling awesome, but sometimes bad for action. Vanity index does not always lead to uptake of research, commercialization of research and sales contrary to popular belief. Just like when people look to see how many Facebook fans you have, and then that metric becomes a vanity index. In commercializing research, vanity index does not necessarily lead to research uptake contrary to popular belief.
Why do people say LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index (SSI) is vanity?
The SSI is largely a vanity metric. “I imagine you can have a high Social Selling Index score and not sell a thing”. That seems to be many people’s experience. In sales, how do you get to $1,000,000 per month in sales? And at the end of each day, create an index card with that day’s date on it and the number of people who registered that day. How do you influence people behaviour that leads to something useful, whether purchase, uptake of an idea, concept or research buy in?
Rebecca Alowo is a lecturer in water engineering at University of Johannesburg. She holds a DEng from Central University of Technology Free State South Africa, an MPhil in Engineering for sustainable development from University of Cambridge and BSc in civil engineering for Makerere University Kampala, Uganda. Rebecca in addition works as a Senior Consultant Research Studies at Quantum Executive Education, and free lances under Kenyonyozi properties.