In the world of science, we are all eager to pursue a scientific impact. However, we regularly forget about the essence of the impact in a larger scope and rather focus on citation counts. The Nature (2013) even examined the impact in a special issue named impact: The Search for the Science That Matters. They conclude with the sentence that “Every government and organization that funds research wants to support science that makes a difference — by opening up new academic vistas, stimulating innovation, influencing public policies or directly improving people’s lives. But separating the best from the rest has never been harder«.
A discussion about an impact can further be developed into a question about the basic requirements for making a good impact. We believe that one of the basic requirements is a good ratio between innovation and acceptance. Here, we rely on a very simple historic example as an argument. In 1615, Galileo Galilei who is known today as “the father of observational astronomy” and “the father of modern physics” claimed that Earth is not the center of the Universe but the Sun is, and that Earth is circling around the Sun. [Wikipedia, 2016]. We know today that there was nothing wrong with his »breakthrough innovation«, however, in his time, there was a lack of acceptance. Galileo Galilei was forced to recant. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest. Nevertheless, today his findings are perceived as a common sense.
We believe that a good impact can only be achieved by a good ratio between innovation and acceptance. Tensiomyography, with over 100 scientific publications, can help scientists in this perspective. We believe that 100 articles from different fields is already enough to reach Acceptance, but still low enough to allow a higher level of Innovation. Most of the other methodologies you can use to assess data are either very new or already well established. Due to this reason, we believe Tensiomyography offers the best ratio between innovation and acceptance, which helps scientists to reach a higher impact.