Free tool

Research Phenotype

Ten questions about your papers, your projects and where you want to be in three years. You get a provisional research phenotype: a label, six axes in plain words, the gap between where you are and where you want to be, and three moves for the next ninety days.

A phenotype is observable traits plus a direction, never a score. Nothing here ranks you against anyone. The questions are scored on this page; nothing leaves your browser.

0 of 10 answered

Where are you?
Papers so far?
Of those, how many with you as first or last author?
Who decides what you work on?
How many projects are live right now?
Where does the stuck one sit?
Hours a week for research, honestly?
In three years you want:
The one thing in the way:
Did you train in the country you work in?

Nothing leaves the browser. Your answers are scored on this page, kept only while it is open, and never saved or sent anywhere. See the Privacy policy.

For members

Members get it from the record

Members connect their ORCID iD and the phenotype is computed from their own public record: every work with its authorship position, co-authors, topics and citations, from OpenAlex. The card shows the number behind each axis and the papers that produced it, the gap against the three-year goal, three moves with the member's own numbers in them, and what would change the label. Nobody is profiled through the tool; the record is the member's own, proven by the ORCID sign-in.

  • Every number with its papers. Each axis opens to the works behind it, with DOI links.
  • Your record, year by year. Output, lead authorship, co-authors, topics, reach and momentum, drawn.
  • The one number that would change the label. Shown against the line it has to cross.

Access is free: confirm your email and you are in. It comes with Dimitri's Letters, one letter a week on publishing and research careers. Request access

How the questions are read

The label comes from rules on your answers, in a fixed order: fewer than five papers is Starting; five to fourteen papers with few lead-author places inside your senior's programme is Apprentice; fifteen or more papers with few lead-author places is Workhorse; most papers led by you and your own decisions is Soloist, or Independent once you are established. Specialist, Bridger and Rising need the topics and the years in a record, so the questions never assign them; the members' card can.

The six axes are rough estimates from one or two answers each. The moves are fixed templates chosen by the label, re-ordered by your three-year goal, with one shaped by what you said is in the way. No sentence on the card is written by a model.

Built by Dr. Dimitrios Magouliotis, Research Associate Professor, for the doctors who read Dimitri's Letters.