Wittgenstein published exactly one book in his lifetime. Socrates wrote nothing at all. Their h-indexes would be catastrophic. Yet here we are, in 2025, churning out papers and monographs on their theories because a physicist¡¯s napkin calculation from 2005 now determines whether philosophers get tenure.

The h-index, that sublime gift from Jorge E. Hirsch, promises to capture a scholar¡¯s entire gravitational field in a single integer. A researcher with an h-index of n has published n papers with at least n citations each ¨C so beautifully reductive that it could make a mathematician weep metaphorically ¨C and a humanist weep literally.

We haven¡¯t just adopted metrics; we¡¯ve built a theology. The contemporary academic ¨C Homo metricus ¨C no longer thinks; they ¡°generate deliverables¡± and ¡°leverage collaborative synergies for citation optimisation¡±.

Goodhart¡¯s Law warned that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure ¨C but who reads Goodhart when his work probably has fewer citations than your last conference presentation?

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Consider the absurdist theatre of a modern hiring committee: ¡°The candidate¡¯s h-index is 23, but their m-quotient suggests early-career trajectory concerns, and their field-normalised eigenvector centrality falls below departmental medians.¡± Not one person in the room has read the candidate¡¯s work.

Our metrics fetish represents an intellectual capitulation of breathtaking scope. We count obsessively precisely because we¡¯ve forgotten how to recognise quality when it stares us in the face. We are sommeliers who have lost their sense of smell and are judging wine by label font size rather than taste.

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But since we¡¯ve already swallowed metricisation, why not drink the well dry ¨C with some appropriate snacks to soak it up, of course?

Recently, two Swedish academics got into the spirit of it by proposing a new metric: the cake factor. A measurement of the excellence of celebration when a paper is published or a grant won, the factor takes into account the number and quality of cakes, as well as the academic rank of those who eat them.

All well and good. But wait. Cake-eating might improve academic morale, but it can also detract from academic performance by making the eaters less streamlined than they would otherwise be. Hence, I propose a different metric as the logical endpoint of metrics mania: the Academic Body Mass Index (ABMI).

ABMI = publication weight ¡Â body weight

Finally, a metric that recognises the corporeal reality of scholarship! A 120-pound assistant professor who produced 60 pounds (c. 27 kg) of publications achieves an impressive ABMI of 0.5. Their 200-pound colleague needs 100 pounds (c. 45 kg) of output to achieve the same score. It¡¯s only fair.

In this way, the ABMI introduces a much-needed element of personal health into academic assessment. We might finally see the end of the sedentary academic lifestyle, as professors hit the gym to improve their metrics (gym membership counting as a legitimate research expense, of course).

Imagine the faculty meetings: ¡°I¡¯m pleased to announce that our department¡¯s average ABMI has increased by 15 per cent this year, thanks to both increased publication weight and the new faculty fitness initiative.¡±

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Search committees could advertise: ¡°Seeking assistant professor with strong publication record and favourable height-to-weight ratio. Pilates instructors given special consideration.¡±

Annual reviews would include weigh-ins: ¡°Your research output is adequate, but have you considered intermittent fasting to improve your ABMI?¡±

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At conference receptions, attendees would quietly calculate each other¡¯s likely scores while taking mouse-sized bites out of carefully portioned cheese cubes. The publication of hard-case editions of multi-volume handbooks could still be celebrated with a slice of cake ¨C but only provided that the slice was shared around the whole department.

Critics might argue that the ABMI favours quantity over quality, but have you tried writing 500 pages of nonsense? It¡¯s exhausting! A new breed of ¡°publication weight consultants¡± would no doubt emerge to help ease the burden, offering expertise in optimising manuscript heft (double-spacing, generous margins, premium paper stock). Still, the sheer physical weight of production would ensure rigour.

Besides, we already favour quantity ¨C we just pretend otherwise, while secretly counting our publications like academic Scrooges hoarding citations.

I¡¯m not immune, of course. My current h-index suggests I am only approximately 73 per cent of a scholar. My implies I¡¯m statistically significant but practically negligible. And my forthcoming ABMI will confirm what I¡¯ve long suspected: the weight of my contributions is inversely proportional to their substance. But at least I can calculate it precisely.

After all, in the modern academy, it¡¯s better to be precisely wrong than vaguely right. Wittgenstein, with his single hypothetical h-index of 1, could never have understood. But at least his asceticism would have kept his ABMI vaguely respectable.

is vice-president of the Polish Academy of Sciences, faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and professor at Kozminski University, Poland.

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