Leo Szilard, a physicist involved in the Manhattan Project, was known for his generosity of ideas and helpfulness toward his colleagues. This generosity was extremely useful, leading to such inventions as the electron microscope and the nuclear reactor, despite having only published fewer than 30 scientific papers over his lifetime. However, Szilard, despite his importance, is little known today, in comparison to physicists such as Einstein and Oppenheimer, and was not generally given his due even in his own time.

For too long, the measurement of scientific contribution has centered on the publication. Whether through the number of articles, the citations those articles have by other articles, or even other far more complicated metrics, most scientists are still measured by a derivative of the research article, the basic technology of scientific publishing that is well over 300 years old.

But science is much more than that. It’s ultimately about being involved in making discoveries and creating new knowledge. It’s creating data, helping others, commenting on previous work, and even using Twitter and blogging. If you help someone out or mentor a student, isn’t that worthwhile as well? How can we begin to measure a person such as Szilard?

Let’s take the example of being helpful. Alexander Oettl of Georgia Tech has studied the importance of this trait, despite its lack of appreciation. He combed through acknowledgments within the immunology literature, in order to find the most helpful scientists — those who read article drafts, provide helpful research advice, or even just act as sounding boards for ideas. And then he looked at what happened when these extremely helpful people died.

Oettl found that even if these people had only been moderately productive when it came to actually authoring papers, the productivity of their collaborators dropped by over 10 percent when these cooperative scientists died. Unfortunately, while simply being helpful is an important contribution to science, it often gets overlooked in academia.