Global Highly Cited Researchers 2019 list reveals top talent in the sciences and social sciences
Researchers in the United States continue to dominate the list; Mainland China now home to 2nd largest concentration of Highly Cited Researchers, superseding the United Kingdom
LONDON and PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 19, 2019 /CNW/ -- The Web of Science Group, a Clarivate Analytics company released its annual list of Highly Cited Researchers today. The highly anticipated list identifies scientists and social scientists who produced multiple papers ranking in the top 1% by citations for their field and year of publication, demonstrating significant research influence among their peers.
The methodology that determines the "who's who" of influential researchers draws on the data and analysis performed by bibliometric experts from the Institute for Scientific Information at the Web of Science Group.
The key findings for 2019 show:
- 6,216 Highly Cited Researchers in various fields from nearly 60 nations.
- The United States is home to the highest number of Highly Cited Researchers, with 2,737 authors, representing 44% of the researchers on the list. Harvard University, home to 203 researchers is the institution has the highest concentration of Highly Cited Researchers in the world. California is also a hotbed of talent, with Stanford University (103), and the University of California campuses at Berkeley, San Diego and Los Angeles are all home to 50+ researchers each.
- Mainland China has seen a huge surge, with 636 researchers named Highly Cited Researchers compared to 482 in 2018. In the main 21 Essential Science Indicator (ESI) categories, there has been a three-fold increase in the number of researchers named since 2014.
- As China increased its share of Highly Cited Researchers, other nations declined. The number of Highly Cited Researchers based at institutions in the United Kingdom has dropped to 516 this year, compared to 546 in 2018. Numbers of Highly Cited Researchers based in Germany and the Netherlands have also fallen.
- This year's list includes 23 Nobel laureates, including three announced this year: Gregg L. Semenza of Johns Hopkins University (Physiology or Medicine), John B. Goodenough of the University of Texas at Austin (Chemistry), and Esther Duflo of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Economics).
- This year's list of Highly Cited Researchers also includes 57 Citation Laureates; individuals recognized by the Web of Science Group through citation analysis, who are 'of Nobel class' and potential Nobel Prize recipients.
- A total of 3,517 researchers are celebrated for their performance in the 21 ESI fields, and 2,491 for cross-field performance, for a total of 6,008 unique researchers, as some Highly Cited Researchers appear in more than one field. This is the second year that researchers with cross-field impact – those with exceptional broad performance based on high impact papers across several fields – have been identified.
- Of the researchers named as Highly Cited in the 21 ESI fields, 185, or 5%, appear in two ESI categories while an exceptional 11 researchers showed exceptional broad performance by being named as Highly Cited in three categories. They are based all over the globe – in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
- Australian research institutes continue to impress. The number of researchers recognized as Highly Cited has more than tripled in six years, from 80 in 2014 to 271 in 2019, among those selected in one or more of the 21 fields. Australian research institutions appear to have recruited a significant number of Highly Cited Researchers since 2014 while also increasing their number of homegrown Highly Cited Researchers.
David Pendlebury, Senior Citation Analyst at the Institute for Scientific Information said: "Recognition and support of these exceptional researchers represents an important activity for a nation or an institution's plans for efficient and accelerated advancement. The Highly Cited Researchers list contributes to the identification of that small fraction of the researcher population that significantly extends the frontiers of knowledge. These researchers create gains for society, innovation and knowledge that make the world healthier, richer, more sustainable and more secure."
The nations and regions with the most highly cited researchers were:
Nations (Primary) |
Total # of HCRs |
Percent HCR |
United States |
2737 |
44% |
Mainland China |
636 |
10.2% |
United Kingdom |
516 |
8.3% |
Germany |
327 |
5.3% |
Australia |
271 |
4.4% |
Canada |
183 |
2.9% |
Netherlands |
164 |
2.6% |
France |
156 |
2.5% |
Switzerland |
155 |
2.5% |
Spain |
116 |
1.9% |
Table 1: The Highly Cited Researchers represent nearly 60 nations, but 85% are affiliated to institutions from just ten nations and 72% from the first five, a remarkable concentration of top talent.
Institutions |
Nation or region |
Number of HCRs |
Harvard University |
United States |
203 |
Stanford University |
United States |
103 |
Chinese Academy of Sciences |
China Mainland |
101 |
Max Planck Society |
Germany |
73 |
Broad Institute |
United States |
60 |
University California Berkeley |
United States |
58 |
Washington University St Louis |
United States |
55 |
Duke University |
United States |
54 |
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) |
United States |
54 |
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center |
United States |
54 |
University California San Diego |
United States |
54 |
University California Los Angeles |
United States |
52 |
Yale University |
United States |
51 |
Cambridge University |
United Kingdom |
50 |
Columbia University |
United States |
47 |
Johns Hopkins University |
United States |
45 |
University of Oxford |
United Kingdom |
44 |
Cornell University |
United States |
42 |
Tsinghua University |
China Mainland |
42 |
University College London |
United Kingdom |
40 |
Table 2: 'Home to Highly Cited Researchers' – affiliations to institutions and organizations as reported by the researcher.
The data are taken from 21 broad research fields within Essential Science Indicators, a component of InCites. The fields are defined by sets of journals and exceptionally, in the case of multidisciplinary journals such as Nature and Science, by a paper-by-paper assignment to a field based on an analysis of the cited references in the papers. This percentile-based selection method removes the citation advantage of older papers relative to recently published ones, since papers are weighed against others in the same annual cohort.
The full 2019 Highly Cited Researchers list and executive summary can be found here, and the methodology can be found here.
Follow us online at #HighlyCited2019.
About the Web of Science Group
Web of Science Group, a Clarivate Analytics company, organizes the world's research information to enable academia, corporations, publishers and governments to accelerate the pace of research. It is powered by Web of Science – the world's largest publisher-neutral citation index and research intelligence platform. Its many well-known brands also include Converis, EndNote, Kopernio, Publons, ScholarOne and the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). The 'university' of Web of Science Group, ISI maintains the knowledge corpus upon which the index and related information and analytical content and services are built; it disseminates that knowledge externally through events, conferences and publications and it carries out research to sustain, extend and improve the knowledge base. For more information, please visit www.webofsciencegroup.com.
About Clarivate Analytics
Clarivate Analytics plc (NYSE:CCC; CCC.WS) is a global leader in providing trusted insights and analytics to accelerate the pace of innovation. We have built some of the most trusted brands across the innovation lifecycle, including Web of Science™, Cortellis™, Derwent™, CompuMark™, MarkMonitor™ and Techstreet™. Today, Clarivate Analytics™ is on a bold entrepreneurial mission to help customers reduce the time from new ideas to life-changing innovations. For more information, please visit www.clarivate.com.
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SOURCE Clarivate Analytics
Amy Bourke-Waite, Director of External Communications, Web of Science Group, [email protected]; Jack Wan, Director of Communications for Asia Pacific, [email protected], http://www.clarivate.com
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