Most research texts get limited readership. It's the quality of the impact rather than the quantity you should measure. I've got some very highly cited papers (top one over 1500 according to Google Scholar). My favourite, though, is the one I've had at least three people say "that was a brilliant paper that really helped me/changed the way I think/inspired me to do some other work" type of thing. It's only my 7th most cited paper, but I was really happy with it and the quality of reactions to it has been very helpful in battling my imposter syndrome (which can be particularly bad as my PhD field is not where I've been working for the last fifteen years). I'm also pleased with a paper I wrote in 2007 that got very few citations in the first few years after publication but from 2015 onwards has been steadily cited and now has over 100 (another 9 last year). That one shows me that my insights were ahead of their time and are still relevant today.
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I've got some very highly cited papers (top one over 1500 according to Google Scholar). My favourite, though, is the one I've had at least three people say "that was a brilliant paper that really helped me/changed the way I think/inspired me to do some other work" type of thing. It's only my 7th most cited paper, but I was really happy with it and the quality of reactions to it has been very helpful in battling my imposter syndrome (which can be particularly bad as my PhD field is not where I've been working for the last fifteen years).
I'm also pleased with a paper I wrote in 2007 that got very few citations in the first few years after publication but from 2015 onwards has been steadily cited and now has over 100 (another 9 last year). That one shows me that my insights were ahead of their time and are still relevant today.