FEATURED ANALYSIS, May/June 2008

Two years have passed since this publication examined university research in the United Kingdom (Science Watch, 17[3]: 1-2, May/June 2006). Now, Science Watch turns its focus back toward the British Isles, with a survey of top-cited U.K. institutions and researchers, based on their representation in a selection of "high-impact" research over the last five years.

For this study, Science Watch drew upon Thomson Reuters' Essential Science Indicators^SM database and its store of "Highly Cited Papers"—specifically, those reports published between 2003 and 2007 that rank, in their respective fields of science and the social sciences, among the top 1% most-cited for their given years of publication. The next step was to extract all such papers whose author listings include at least one U.K.-based institutional affiliation; this produced a file of roughly 6,000 papers. From that selection of elite reports, Science Watch identified the most-cited institutions and authors.

The top institutions are ranked in the first two tables below, according to two measures: in the first table, by total citations to each institution's store of high-impact papers; and, in the second table, by impact, or citations per paper (with the latter ranking confined to those institutions that published at least 30 high-impact papers during the five-year period). Highly cited authors, meanwhile, are listed in the third table below, ranked by total citations.

Among the most-cited institutions, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge stand particularly tall, with similar citation totals each topping 44,000, with Imperial College London close behind. The performance of this trio is perhaps not surprising, given the size and complexity of the institutions (including medical schools and other affiliated entities) and their correspondingly large output of high-impact papers: Oxford and Cambridge each fielded more than 600 such reports during the five-year period; Imperial College recorded more than 500.

Meanwhile, as is frequently the case, the top institutions as ranked by impact generally produced a smaller quantity of reports but, on average, made each paper tell. Authors from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, for example, contributed to 98 high-impact reports and registered a cites-per-paper score exceeding 136. Of particular weight was a 2004 Nucleic Acids Research report on the Pfam protein families database (Alex Bateman, et al., 32: D138-41, 2004). This report, and its 1,000-plus citations (the third-most-cited paper in this survey) helped boost Sanger's Richard Durbin to the #1 spot among the U.K.-based authors featured here, also assisting the placements of coauthors Alex Bateman and Sam Griffiths-Jones.

Like the Sanger Institute, the European Bioinformatics Institute produced a comparatively small (71) but potent core of papers covering resources and tools for collecting and analyzing biological data, including genomes and protein sequences. EBI authors also contributed to highly cited papers reporting specific genome sequences, including that of the Brown Norway rat and other organisms.

The survey's most-cited paper, a 2003 multiauthor Journal of Hypertension report from the European Society of Hypertension-European Society of Cardiology (G. Mancia, et al., 21[6]: 1011-53) , presenting guidelines for the management of arterial hypertension, garnered more than 1,300 cites, anchoring the placements of contributors Neil R. Poulter, Gordon T. McInnes, and Bryan Williams. Elsewhere on the list, the familiar names of Oxford's Rory Collins and Richard Peto figured in a variety of studies evaluating treatment for cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. And Jack Cuzick was featured in this publication's annual listing of "hot" authors in 2007 (Science Watch, 18[2]: 1-2, March/April 2007).

Among the list's space scientists, Robert C. Nichol, Jon Loveday, and Avery Meiksin made the most of their participation in highly cited papers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, while the high-impact work of Carlos S. Frenk and John A. Peacock included reports from the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey.

---

^Top

---

^Top

---

 

^Top

Christopher King is the Editor of the Science Watch^® Newsletter.

Keywords: United Kingdom, UK, UK research, UK institutions, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, European Bioinformatics Institute, Richard Durbin, Alex Bateman, Carlos S. Frenk, Rory Collins, Richard Peto.

*Due to data revisions during the press run for the May/June 2008 Science Watch^® Newsletter issue, these rankings differ slightly from the print version.