Forgetting what you have published I was discussing this topic with an older professor of mine who had published more than 90 papers and couple of books in his field. The papers are highly specialized and half of them are with different co-authors from the same or a different field.

Since he has so many papers, I asked him if he was able to remember and / or explain all of his published papers to a random guy or student on the street if he's asked to do so. His answer was, of course, 'not really'. Since his papers were highly specialized and he tends to change his research interests over time, his memory of the papers tends to fade. He'd still be able to remember and explain the methodology and results of any of the published research, but not in detail or without first re-reading them.

My question is, how much is expected from a scientist to remember from his papers? If you get asked to explain some of your papers, what of the following would you do:


Just explain what's in the abstract (if you remember), or
Tell them to just read the paper themselves, because 'everything is there'
People usually do not ask: "explain this paper" they will read a paper and may ask a more specific question about a part they did not understand.

The professor may or may not be able to answer. If he wants to, he can look up the paper or the answer to the questions asked. His experience and knowledge will probably help him to find the answer faster than the person who asked the question. If he does not want to, or cannot answer the question because he forgot, does not have time, or for any other reason, the person asking is simply out of luck: they will have to ask someone else or do research themselves to find the answers they are looking for.

Nobody can remember all the details about 90 highly specialised scientific papers, especially if they involved lots of work by different authors that may have been done decades ago. Professors and other scientists are human beings: they forget things and make mistakes just like everyone else. This is not a problem.