The measure of total citations favors larger institutions that produce a high volume of papers, as was noted in these pages three years ago in a collection of rankings based on ISI Essential Science Indicators data covering the years 1991 to 2001 (see Science Watch, 12[4]: 1-2, July/August 2001). On the other hand, a ranking by impact (citations per paper), allowing smaller producers of papers to compete more equitably, would result in a different list of institutions.

Of the institutions here, none achieved greater distinction than Harvard University, which appears in seven of the eleven rankings, and in the top spot in all but one of those appearances (the exception being chemistry, where Harvard came in at #10). The University of Texas System also accounts for seven placements, while the University of California, San Francisco, is not far behind with six. Johns Hopkins University, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the University of Tokyo each score five appearances, with Stanford, Yale, the University of Washington, and Washington University of St. Louis each making four of the lists.

For comparison, Science Watch also consulted the standard ten-year window of ISI Essential Science Indicators data, based on a recent bimonthly update covering papers published and cited from January 1993 through October 2003. Thus, it was possible to compare the most-cited institutions in these fields during a recent five-year period versus a ten-year period. In each table, the right-hand column shows each institution’s placement according to the 1993-2003 data. Those institutions that placed higher in the five-year ranking are marked with an arrow.

When compared between the five-year and the ten-year periods, some institutions simply improve their positions within the top ten. Others, however, show evidence of a substantial citation surge in the last five years. The University of Tokyo, for instance, ranks 22nd in pharmacology in the 1993-2003 listing, but appears at #10 in the 1999-2003 table. The institutions collectively indexed under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, meanwhile, vault from 22nd spot to the #2 rank in chemistry. Princeton University, which makes no top-ten appearances in the 1993-2003 database, shows up twice in the five-year ranking, in physics and space science.

Biology & Biochemistry Rank Institution Papers 99-03 Cites 99-03 Rank for 93-03 1 Harvard U. 4,021 61,134 1 2 U. Texas 4,121 47,728 2 3 U. Tokyo  3,186 26,921 5 4 UC San Francisco 1,805 24,455 3 5 UC San Diego 1,720 22,160 4 6 U. Pennsylvania 1,785 22,055 14 7 U. Washington 1,674 21,593 12 8 Johns Hopkins U. 1,787 21,387 6 9 Yale U. 1,551 20,560 10 10 UCLA  1,730 20,240 15 Clinical Medicine Rank Institution Papers 99-03 Cites 99-03 Rank for 93-03 1 Harvard U. 15,759 170,070 1 2 U. Texas 15,707 128,120 2 3 Johns Hopkins U. 9,565 94,184 3 4 UC San Francisco 7,891 73,092 4 5 U. Washington 7,581 70,677 6 6 NCI  5,236 65,599 7 7 UCLA  7,094 61,032 8 8 Mayo Clinic/Fdn. 8,148 59,398 9 9 Brigham & Women’s Hosp. 4,222 58,173 10 10 Stanford U. 5,297 56,630 12 Materials Science Rank Institution Papers 99-03 Cites 99-03 Rank for 93-03 1 Tohoku U. 2,306 6,237 1 2 Chinese Acad. Sci. 3,932 5,956 12 3 MIT  722 4,001 2 4 U. Cambridge 922 3,661 5 5 Natl. Inst. Mat. Sci. 1,383 3,633 22 6 Osaka U. 1,459 3,623 9 7 UC Santa Barbara 407 3,622 3 8 Penn State U. 958 3,433 4 9 U. Tokyo 1,375 3,298 17 10 CNRS  1,141 3,274 14 Molecular Biology & Genetics Rank Institution Papers 99-03 Cites 99-03 Rank for 93-03 1 Harvard U. 3,622 96,470 1 2 U. Texas 2,352 42,576 2 3 Stanford U. 1,293 36,586 4 4 UC San Francisco 1,412 36,377 3 5 Johns Hopkins U. 1,430 31,099 6 6 UC San Diego 1,139 30,815 8 7 MIT  782 29,110 5 8 NCI  1,423 28,211 9 9 Washington U. 1,115 27,829 11 10 Yale U. 1,197 27,488 7 Pharmacology Rank Institution Papers 99-03 Cites 99-03 Rank for 93-03 1 U. Texas 688 4,406 1 2 NCI  379 3,882 2 3 Merck & Co. 480 3,751 3 4 U. North Carolina 479 3,506 6 5 Adis Int’l. 328 3,466 4 6 Vanderbilt U. 281 3,052 8 7 Smithkline Beecham 228 2,952 7 8 UC San Francisco 311 2,907 12 9 US EPA 419 2,832 10 10 U. Tokyo 475 2,775 22 Space Science Rank Institution Papers 99-03 Cites 99-03 Rank for 93-03 1 Caltech  2,793 34,425 2 2 NASA  3,518 32,319 1 3 Harvard-Smithsonian Ctr. 2,157 25,242 3 4 UC Berkeley 1,537 21,165 4 5 U. Cambridge 1,481 21,014 6 6 Space Telescope Sci. Inst. 1,408 19,727 5 7 Johns Hopkins U. 1,306 16,084 8 8 U. Arizona 1,367 14,545 7 9 Princeton U. 858 14,240 12 10 European So. Observ. 1,321 13,117 10   Chemistry Rank Institution Papers 99-03 Cites 99-03 Rank for 93-03 1 UC Berkeley 2,377 22,574 1 2 Chinese Acad. Sci. 10,741 22,497 22 3 U. Tokyo 3,846 21,450 3 4 Kyoto U. 4,242 20,701 2 5 Russian Acad. Sci. 14,208 17,950 4 6 MIT  1,585 17,927 5 7 CNRS  3,549 16,563 11 8 ETH Zurich 1,968 16,365 7 9 Osaka U. 3,342 15,051 13 10 Harvard U. 1,139 14,246 8 Immunology Rank Institution Papers 99-03 Cites 99-03 Rank for 93-03 1 Harvard U. 1,836 28,755 1 2 NIAID 960 18,182 2 3 NCI  857 12,351 3 4 U. Texas 978 11,485 5 5 U. Washington 726 11,401 10 6 UC San Francisco 735 11,350 8 7 Stanford U. 554 9,964 4 8 Yale U. 517 9,956 9 9 Osaka U. 506 9,732 20 10 Washington U. 517 9,011 6 Microbiology Rank Institution Papers 99-03 Cites 99-03 Rank for 93-03 1 Harvard U. 842 11,872 1 2 Inst. Pasteur 968 9,687 2 3 NIAID  663 7,781 3 4 U. Texas 702 6,419 5 5 U. Washington 489 6,369 10 6 U. Wisconsin 643 6,042 4 7 NCI  450 5,963 6 8 U. Oxford 480 5,587 15 9 Washington U. 342 5,407 9 10 USDA  799 5,376 7 Neurosciences Rank Institution Papers 99-03 Cites 99-03 Rank for 93-03 1 Harvard U. 2,731 41,010 1 2 Johns Hopkins U. 1,828 23,256 2 3 UC San Francisco 1,320 22,032 4 4 Yale U. 1,450 19,293 5 5 U. Texas 1,894 18,296 10 6 Columbia U. 1,497 17,825 7 7 UCLA  1,750 17,769 6 8 UC San Diego 1,326 17,120 8 9 Washington U. 1,132 17,082 11 10 Massachusetts Gen. Hosp. 982 16,873 9 Physics Rank Institution Papers 99-03 Cites 99-03 Rank for 93-03 1 U. Tokyo 7,199 40,985 1 2 INFN, Italy 6,055 35,876 2 3 MIT  3,674 35,238 3 4 Russian Acad. Sci. 14,529 33,315 5 5 UC Berkeley 3,480 30,016 6 6 CERN 3,352 30,483 4 7 Stanford U. 2,421 26,157 7 8 Tohoku U. 5,139 25,344 16 9 Princeton U. 2,324 24,860 14 10 U. Cambridge 3,415 24,673 12 X Source: X   Thomson Scientific ISI Essential Science Indicators Web-based evaluation tool. Take the product tour!