Eight UNU-MERIT researchers have been recognised as being among the most widely cited scientists in the world, according to the latest edition of the annual Stanford University / Elsevier ranking known as the ‘World's Top 2% Scientists’ list.
First published in 2019, the Stanford list is updated every year; the seventh and latest version was released last month. There are two categories within this ranking: single-year performance (based on citations received during the previous calendar year - in this case, 2023) and career-long performance.
How the ranking is calculated
The publicly available database provides standardised information on citations, h-index, co-authorship adjusted hm-index, citations to papers in different authorship positions and a composite indicator (c-score). Scientists are classified into 22 scientific fields and 174 sub-fields, and the selection is based on the top 100,000 scientists by c-score - with and without self-citations - or a percentile rank of 2% or more in the sub-field.
Highlights from the 2024 ranking
- UNU-MERIT professorial fellows René Kemp, Bart Verspagen, Wim Groot, René Belderbos and Robin Cowan were listed among the world’s top-cited scientists in the career-long category.
- For the single-year category focusing on performance in 2023, these five senior researchers were again featured, alongside three more of our professorial fellows: Luc Soete, Anthony Arundel and Pierre Mohnen.
Commenting on this accomplishment, UNU-MERIT Interim Director Clemens Kool stated: "Having so many UNU-MERIT researchers on this list is a great achievement. It convincingly confirms our institute’s research excellence and reputation, which we are continuing to build on for the future."
