Interactions as a paramount existential principle and the scientists who do not exist

“Quantum physics does not describe how things are, but how things interact with one another. So, I think this is general. Even we human beings — I’m not a thing. I’m a net of interactions with the world around me, with the people who know me, who love me. It’s a more powerful way of trying to grasp reality by focusing on what interacts with what and how, and somehow, the objects are just the nodes of interactions“. Physicist Carlo Rovelli

In this context, it is relevant to remember that it is easy to know the number of direct interactions of any scientist, measured by the number of scientists with whom he has worked, just by accessing the Scopus platform and searching the total number of co-authors, however, It would be much better to know the total number of interactions, not only directly, but also indirectly, through citations, the number of Mendeley Readers and those interactions evaluated by PlumX metrics (Scopus platform) and by Altmetrics (Platform Publons), but that at the moment it is only possible to assess article by article, which not only prevents useful comparisons of total values between scientists in the same scientific area but it also prevents us from knowing which researchers have such a small number of total interactions. which is almost as if those scientists did not exist, at least in light of the interpretation of physicist Carlos Rovelli.

PS – It’s true that many scientists have a low number of interactions only because they have access to a low amount of funding. Still, we must not forget the advice of Jean-Pierre Bourguignon the former President of the European Research Council-ERC and be willing to wage “war” on politicians https://pacheco-torgal.blogspot.com/2019/12/best-funding-practices-that-should.html