Mainland China has nearly
doubled its share of Highly Cited Researchers in four years
LONDON, Nov. 16, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Clarivate Plc
(NYSE:CLVT), a global leader in providing trusted information and
insights to accelerate the pace of innovation, unveiled its 2021
list of Highly Cited Researchers™ today. The methodology that
determines the "who's who" of influential researchers draws on the
data and analysis performed by bibliometric experts and data
scientists at the Institute for Scientific Information™ at
Clarivate.
The annual list identifies some 6,600 researchers from across
the globe who demonstrated significant influence in their chosen
field or fields through the publication of multiple highly cited
papers during the last decade. The Highly Cited Researchers' names
are drawn from the publications that rank in the top 1% by
citations for field and publication year in the Web of Science™
citation index, and the list identifies the research institutions
and countries where they are based.
The key findings for 2021 show:
- 6,602 researchers from more than 70 countries and
regions have been recognized this year – 3,774 in specific
fields and 2,828 for cross-field impact.
- The United States is
the institutional home for 2,622 of the Highly Cited Researchers in
2021, which amounts to 39.7%, down from 43.3% in 2018. While there
has been a decline in the number of U.S.-based Highly Cited
Researchers, there can be no doubt that the U.S. still leads the
world in research influence. Of all papers indexed in the Web of
Science for 2010 to 2020 the percentage with a U.S.-based author
was 24.7%.
- Mainland China is
second this year, with 935 Highly Cited Researchers, or 14.2%, up
from 7.9% in 2018. In four years, Mainland China has nearly doubled
its share of the Highly Cited Researchers population.
- The United Kingdom,
with 492 researchers or 7.5%, comes in third. This is a
particularly high number of researchers at the very top of their
fields in terms of citation impact, given that the United Kingdom has a population 1/5 the size
of the United States and 1/20 the
size of Mainland China.
- Australia has
narrowly overtaken Germany at
fourth, with 332 researchers, and the Netherlands is sixth, with 207 researchers
– remarkable for countries of 25 million and 17 million,
respectively, versus Germany's 83
million. They also place above Canada, France, Spain
and Switzerland in the top
10.
- Harvard University, home to
214 researchers, is once again the institution with the highest
concentration of Highly Cited Researchers in the world.
- Hong Kong has
increased its number to 79 from 60 last year, an impressive
achievement, partly due to a dramatic increase in Highly Cited
Researchers from the University of Hong
Kong, which more than doubled its number of Highly Cited
Researchers from 14 to 33 from 2020 to 2021.
- For the first time, researchers from Bangladesh, Kuwait, Mauritius, Morocco and the Republic of
Georgia are included on the
list this year.
Naturally, Mainland China's gain means losses elsewhere. There
is a 1.8% loss in Highly Cited Researchers for the United States since last year and 3.6%
since 2018. This contrasts with an increase of 6.3% for Mainland
China since 2018. The United
Kingdom exhibits a decline of .5% since last year and 1.5%
since 2018. Germany has lost .9%
share since 2018.
David Pendlebury, Senior Citation
Analyst at the Institute for Scientific Information, said: "The
headline story is one of sizeable gains for Mainland China and a
decline for the United States,
particularly when you look at the trends over the last four years,
which reflect a transformational rebalancing of scientific and
scholarly contributions at the top level through the globalization
of the research enterprise."
Nobel Prize recipients and researchers of Nobel
quality
This year's list includes 24 Nobel laureates, including five
announced this year: David Julius,
University of California San Francisco,
San Francisco, CA, United States (Physiology or Medicine);
Ardem Patapoutian, Scripps Research,
La Jolla, CA, United States (Physiology or Medicine);
David W. C. MacMillan, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, United States (Chemistry); David Card, University of
California Berkeley, Berkeley,
CA, United States
(Economics); and, Guido Imbens, Stanford
University, Stanford, CA,
United States (Economics). Also
included are 77 Citation Laureates™: individuals recognized by
Clarivate, through citation analysis, as 'of Nobel class' and
potential Nobel Prize recipients.
Exceptional broad performance
Of the researchers named as Highly Cited in the 21 Essential
Science Indicators (ESI)™ fields, 23 researchers showed
exceptionally broad performance, recognized for being highly cited
in three or more fields. They are a truly global group – in
North America, Europe, Asia
and the Middle East. Professor
Rob Knight from the University of San Diego California was alone in
being named for four ESI fields (Biology and Biochemistry;
Environment/Ecology; Microbiology; Molecular Biology and
Genetics).
Figure 1: Highly Cited Researchers by country or
region
Ranking
|
Country/Territory
|
Number
HCRs
|
%
|
Change % Share 2018
to 2021
|
1
|
United
States
|
2,622
|
39.7
|
-3.6
|
2
|
China
Mainland
|
935
|
14.2
|
6.2
|
3
|
United
Kingdom
|
492
|
7.5
|
-1.5
|
4
|
Australia
|
332
|
5
|
1
|
5
|
Germany
|
331
|
5
|
-0.9
|
6
|
The
Netherlands
|
207
|
3.1
|
0
|
7
|
Canada
|
196
|
3
|
0.3
|
8
|
France
|
146
|
2.2
|
-0.4
|
9
|
Spain
|
109
|
1.7
|
-0.2
|
10
|
Switzerland
|
102
|
1.5
|
-0.7
|
Figure 2: Highly Cited Researchers by research institution or
organization
Ranking
|
Institution and
Country/Region
|
Number
HCRs
|
1
|
Harvard University,
United States
|
214
|
2
|
Chinese Academy of
Sciences, China Mainland
|
194
|
3
|
Stanford University,
United States
|
122
|
4
|
National Institutes of
Health (NIH), United States
|
93
|
5
|
Max Planck Society,
Germany
|
70
|
6
|
Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT), United States
|
64
|
7
|
University of
California Berkeley, United States
|
62
|
8
|
Tsinghua University,
China Mainland
|
58
|
9
|
University of
California San Diego, United States
|
56
|
10
|
University of Oxford,
United Kingdom
|
51
|
Joel Haspel, SVP Strategy,
Science at Clarivate said: "This year's data reflect a decade's
worth of research publications from the global scientific
community. As well as documenting the 'Eureka!' moments, our data
tell the story of late nights spent filling in grant applications,
poring over results in the lab, the unsung work of peer reviewing
contemporaries' manuscripts, and the many small failures that
ultimately lead to bigger successes and accelerating
innovation.
Our analysts have found continued growth in the highly cited,
high-impact research from Mainland China, but the United States remains the scientific
powerhouse of the world, and U.S. institutions represent five of
the top ten, with Harvard University at
the very top of the leader board."
The full 2021 Highly Cited Researchers list and executive
summary can be found here.
Follow us online: on Twitter @ClarivateAG #HighlyCited2021.
Notes to editors:
Methodology:
More than 6,600 researchers, in 21 fields of the sciences and
social sciences, and cross-field categories were selected based on
the number of highly cited papers they produced over an 11-year
period from January 2010 to
December 2020. The
methodology that determines the who's who of researchers draws
on data and analysis performed by bibliometric experts at the
Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate. It uses InCites
Benchmarking & Analytics™, Essential Science Indicators™ and a
unique compilation of science performance metrics and trend data
based on scholarly paper publication counts and citation data from
the Web of Science™, the world's largest publisher-neutral citation
index and research intelligence platform.
The sharp decline for Switzerland is anomalous and reflects a change
in our methodology: Papers with more than 30 institutional
addresses were removed from our analysis in past years, but this
year we eliminated papers with more than 30 authors or group
authorship. The change, which we judged an improvement in
reasonably crediting individual authors – the previous use of
institutional addresses was a heuristic – happened to impact
Switzerland heavily and especially
researchers at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, which
produces a significant number of highly cited papers with many
authors but few institutional addresses.
About Clarivate
Clarivate™ is a global leader in providing solutions to accelerate
the lifecycle of innovation. Our bold mission is to help customers
solve some of the world's most complex problems by providing
actionable information and insights that reduce the time from new
ideas to life-changing inventions in the areas of science and
intellectual property. We help customers discover, protect and
commercialize their inventions using our trusted subscription and
technology-based solutions coupled with deep domain expertise. For
more information, please visit clarivate.com.
Media Contact:
Amy Bourke-Waite
Director of External Communications – Science
media.enquiries@clarivate.com
Logo -
https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1159266/Clarivate_Logo.jpg