The Value of Critical Research in Today’s Academia

This year, I was included in the Stanford–Elsevier global list of the world’s top 2% most-cited researchers. It’s the kind of recognition that lands quietly—and invites reflection more than reaction.

In academia today, metrics are omnipresent. We are surrounded by citation indices, performance dashboards, and rankings that attempt to quantify impact, productivity, and relevance. They shape institutional behaviour, influence funding, and increasingly define academic value.

And yet, the kind of work I believe in—the work that lingers, questions, and complicates—rarely fits into these metrics easily.

This recognition doesn’t mark a finish line, nor does it validate everything I’ve written. But it does offer a moment to pause and consider what it means to do research that matters.

Much of my work sits at the intersection of tourism, governance, resilience, and sustainability. These are not clean or easily measured concepts. They involve contested meanings, political trade-offs, and long-term consequences. They demand not just technical analysis, but normative clarity—about whose values are represented, whose futures are being planned for, and who gets to decide.

If this citation list says anything, it’s that there is space—even in a metric-driven system—for critical, applied, and systems-oriented work to gain traction. That research grounded in complexity, co-creation, and real-world tensions can still resonate, even if it doesn’t always follow neat disciplinary lines or yield instant results.

But more importantly, it reminds me that none of this is done alone. Ideas are shaped through dialogue. Articles are sharpened by critical reviewers, co-authors, mentors, and students who challenge assumptions. Fieldwork is made possible by communities willing to let us in. And insights are often born not in front of a screen, but in the messy conversations that unfold across time and space.

The metrics may reflect individual names. But the work is always collective.

So, what now?

More questions. More friction. More commitment to asking how knowledge can serve—not abstractly, but in the governance decisions, policies, and landscapes that shape lives and futures.

I’m deeply grateful for those I’ve worked with, learned from, and debated along the way. You are present in every sentence I’ve published—whether or not your name appears beside mine.

And if this moment is worth sharing, it’s because it affirms something quiet but important: that thoughtful, critical, and grounded scholarship still has space to grow. And still has work to do.

— Ante

Source: Ioannidis, John P.A. (2025), “August 2025 data-update for “Updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators””, Elsevier Data Repository, V8, doi: 10.17632/btchxktzyw.8

Access database: https://elsevier.digitalcommonsdata.com/datasets/btchxktzyw/8