The Web of Science ranking of the world’s most highly-cited scientists was released this morning, telling us who makes up the top 1 percent of the world’s scientists. These are the authors of influential papers that other scientists point to when making their arguments.
EDITOR’S NOTE! — Web of Science shared last year’s data! We apologize. List below is now corrected, changes to copy in bold. We’re so sorry.
Twenty-three of the citation laureates are Duke scholars or had a Duke affiliation when the landmark works were created over the last decade.
Two names on the list belong to Duke’s international powerhouse of developmental psychology, the Genes, Environment, Health and Behavior Lab, led by Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi.
Dan Scolnic of Physics returns as our lone entry in Space Science, which just makes Duke sound cooler all around, don’t you think?
This is a big deal for the named faculty and an impressive line on their CVs. But the selection process weeds out “hyper-authorship, excessive self-citation and anomalous citation patterns,” so don’t even think about gaming it.
Fifty-nine nations are represented by the 6,636 individual researchers on this year’s list. About half of the citation champions are in specific fields and half in ‘cross-field’ — where interdisciplinary Duke typically dominates. The U.S. is still the most-cited nation with 36 percent of the world’s share, but shrinking slightly. Mainland China continues to rise, claiming second place with 20 percent of the cohort, up 2.5 percent from just last year. Then, in order, the UK, Germany and Australia round out the top five.
Tiny Singapore, home of the Duke NUS Graduate Medical School, is the tenth-most-cited with 1.6 percent of the global share.
In fact, five Duke NUS faculty made this year’s list: Antonio Bertoletti, Derek Hausenloy and Jenny Guek-Hong Low for cross-field; Carolyn S. P. Lam for clinical medicine, and the world famous “Bat Man,” Lin-Fa Wang, for microbiology.
Okay, you scrolled this far, let’s go!
Biology and Biochemistry
Charles A. Gersbach
Clinical Medicine
Christopher Bull Granger
Adrian F. Hernandez
Gary Lyman
Cross-Field
Priyamvada Acharya
Chris Beyrer
Stefano Curtarolo
Vance G. Fowler Jr.
Po-Chun Hsu (adjunct, now U. Chicago)
Ru-Rong Ji
William E. Kraus
David B. Mitzi
Christopher B. Newgard
Pratiksha I. Thakore (now with Genentech)
Xiaofei Wang
Mark R. Wiesner
Environment and Ecology
Robert B. Jackson (adjunct, now Stanford U.)
Microbiology
Barton F. Haynes
Neuroscience and Behavior
Quinn T. Ostrom
Plant and Animal Science
Sheng-Yang He
Psychiatry and Psychology
Avshalom Caspi
William E. Copeland
Terrie E. Moffitt
Space Science
Dan Scolnic