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Two Utah Pharmaceutics Researchers (S.W. Kim, Y-H. Bae) Among the Top 1% Most Cited Researchers in Thomson Reuters "Pharmacology/Toxicology" Category
Two Utah Pharmaceutics Researchers (S.W. Kim, Y-H. Bae) Among the Top 1% Most Cited Researchers in Thomson Reuters "Pharmacology/Toxicology" Category
Jun 24, 2014 12:00 AM
EXPLANATION OF THE METHOD AND PURPOSE OF THOMSON REUTERS NEW LIST OF HIGHLY CITED RESEARCHERS 2014
Thomson Reuters has generated a new list of Highly Cited Researchers in the sciences and social sciences to update and complement a previously published list that was presented on the website ISIHighlyCited.com.
The old list, first issued in 2001, identified more than 7,000 researchers who were the most cited in one or more of 21 broad fields of the sciences and social sciences, fields similar to those used in the Essential Sciences Indicators database. This analysis considered articles and reviews published in Web of
A selection of influential researchers based on total citations gives preference to well-established scientists and social sciences researchers who have produced many publications. It is only logical that the more papers generated,
Thomson Reuters decided to take a different approach -- and use a different method -- to identify influential researchers, field-by-field, to update the previously published list. First, to focus on more contemporary research achievement, only articles and reviews in science and social sciences journals indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection during the 11-year period 2002-2012 were surveyed. Second, rather than using total citations as a measure of influence or ‘impact,’ only Highly Cited Papers were considered. Highly Cited Papers are defined as those that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year indexed in the Web of Science, which is generally but not always
Those researchers who, within an ESI-defined field, published Highly Cited Papers were judged to be influential, so the production of multiple top 1% papers was interpreted as a mark of exceptional impact. Relatively younger researchers are more apt to emerge in such an analysis than in one dependent on total citations over many years. To be able to recognize early and
The first criterion for selection was that the researcher needed enough citations to his or her Highly Cited Papers to rank in the top 1% by total citations in the ESI field in which they were considered. Authors of Highly Cited Papers who met the first criterion in a field were ranked by
Of course, there are many highly accomplished and influential researchers who are not recognized by the method described above and whose names do not appear in the new list. This outcome would hold no matter what specific method was chosen for selection. Each measure or set of indicators, whether total citations, h-index, relative citation impact, mean percentile score, etc., accentuates different types of performance and achievement. Here we arrive at what many expect from such lists but what is really unobtainable: that there is some optimal or ultimate method of measuring performance. The only reasonable approach to interpreting a list of top researchers such as ours is to fully understand the method behind the data and results, and why the method was used. With that knowledge, in the end, the results may be judged by users as relevant or irrelevant to their needs or interests.