Highly Cited Researchers 2014 and 2015: An investigation of some of the world's most influential scientific minds on the institutional and country level

Abstract

For several years, Clarivate Analytics, formerly the IP & Science business of Thomson Reuters, has published a list of researchers who have published the largest number of highly cited papers in a particular discipline. These researchers are described by Clarivate Analytics as highly-cited researchers (HCRs) or as some of the world's most influential scientific minds. Whereas the HCR 2014 list refers to the publication years 2002 to 2012, the HCR 2015 list refers to the years 2003 to 2013. The HCR 2015 list contains a total of 3126 researchers worldwide. Compared with the HCR 2014 list which includes 3215 researchers, the 2015 list thus includes 89 fewer researchers as HCRs. This study undertakes a comparison of HCR 2014 and 2015 on the institute and country levels. As the results on the countries show, for HCR 2015, around half the researchers work in the USA; a further ∼10% in Great Britain. About 6% or 5% of the researchers are in Germany or China respectively. In comparison with HCR 2014, no country has lost as many HCRs as the USA with 3.4%. An especially great increase in HCRs occurred in Australia (1.3%), Saudi Arabia (0.7%), Germany (0.5%) and Great Britain (0.5%). The evaluation of the institutional affiliations proves that - based on the primary affiliations - the largest number of HCRs is employed at the University of California, System (n=161). This is followed by Harvard University (n = 95). However, both institutions are also - if one compares HCR 2015 with HCR 2014 - affected by a large decrease in the HCRs (both in numbers of HCR and percentages).