The Most-Cited Institutions in Social
Sciences, 1998-2008 An institutional profile from
Essential Science
IndicatorsSM
This month, ScienceWatch.com presents a
listing of the top 20 institutions which, as of the
first bimonthly update of Essential Science
Indicators (January 1, 1998-February 29, 2008)
attracted the highest total citations to their papers
published in
Thomson
Reuters-indexed Social Sciences journals. These
institutions are the top 20 out of a pool of 563
institutions comprising the top 1% ranked by total
citation count in this field.
The Social Sciences field includes journals that cover the following
specific areas of study:
communication
environmental studies
library and information sciences
political science
public health and administration
rehabilitation
social work and social policy
sociology
anthropology
law
education
Rather unusually, the top 20 institutions in this field are all based in
the US, and are all universities.
Leading the way is Harvard University, with 4,913 papers cited a total of
43,540 times. Harvard's most-cited papers in this field cover such diverse
topics as patient compliance, college drinking habits, quality-of-life
surveys and study designs, and behavioral approaches to the study of law
and economics. Among the Harvard researchers who have spoken to us about
their work are
Gary King,
Dimitrios Trichopoulos, and
Robert Sampson.
The University of Michigan ranks at #2, with 3,878 papers cited a total of
31, 823 times. Topics in this institution's highly cited papers include
dynamics in urban neighborhoods, the long-term effects of childhood
poverty, telephone and web survey designs, and youth tobacco control.
Ranking at #3 is the University of California, Los Angeles, with 3,707
papers cited a total of 30,517 times. The effects of lifestyle on medical
problems and costs, the quality of heath care in the US, menopausal
symptoms across ethnic groups, and topics pertinent to the care of the
elderly are among UCLA's most-cited papers.
Coming in at #4 is the University of North Carolina, with 4,134 papers
cited a total of 23,181 times. Topics garnering high citations include job
quality surveys, non-standard employment relations, children's education
issues, health care questionnaires, the role of religion in American life,
and the views of African Americans on research participation as influenced
by the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.
The University of Washington joins the list at #5, with 3,250 papers cited
a total of 21,217 times. Community issues at the forefront of the
University of Washington's highly cited papers include alcohol intervention
for fraternities, web-searching behaviors of high school students, the
influence of mass media on community political involvement, adolescent drug
abuse, community-based partnerships for elder care, and studies on
cohabitation and marriage.
The #6 slot belongs to the University of Wisconsin, with 3,825 papers cited
a total of 20,845 times. Education is a topic of great concern in this
institution's highly cited papers, including language development in
children, motivating the academically unmotivated, effective professional
development for teachers, and the statistical practices of education
researchers. Other topics include fear tactics in public health campaigns,
the impact of socioeconomic status on adult health and employment, and web
customer satisfaction.
Johns Hopkins University ranks at #7, with 2,498 papers cited a total of
18,833 times. Fourteen of the top 20 papers for Johns Hopkins relate to
public health matters, including the role of race in the health care
experience, the prevalence of untreated mental illness, functional decline
in the elderly, patient-physician relationships, and the automation of many
aspects of the health care process, such as patient reports and pill
counting.
The University of Illinois ranks at #8, with 3,840 papers cited a total of
18,823 times. Urban sprawl, neoliberalism, studying family processes, the
role of money in well-being, alcohol and sexual assault in college women,
internet searching habits, and methods for teaching children to read are
among the highly cited topics for this university. In addition, there are
also two anthropological studies in the 20 most-cited papers: one on human
population and climate in the late Pleistocene compared with modern humans,
and another on food production in the later Stone Age.
Coming in at #9 is Columbia University, with 3,122 papers cited a total of
18,805 times. Highly cited papers for this institution cover topics such as
socratic deliberation, social memory studies, stigma, revenue management,
global tactics in corporate governance, and social constructivision.
Rounding out the top 10 is Yale University, with 2,349 papers cited a total
of 17,931 times. Researcher
Bruce Russett ranked #1 in the November 2006 Special
Topic on Armed Conflict and spoke with us about his work; two of his
papers appear in the top 20 papers in Sociology for Yale. Other topics
on this list include sexual harassment, voter turnout studies, human
rights treaties, antidiscrimination legislation, and drugs and pain
management in elder care.
The 10 remaining institutions on this list include three more from
California (Stanford University at #11, the University of California,
Berkeley, at #13, and the University of California, San Francisco at #20),
one more from Maryland (the University of Maryland at #16) and two from
Pennsylvania (the University of Pennsylvania at #12 and the Pennsylvania
State University at #18).
Scientists in these institutions who have spoken with us about their work
include Stanford's
James Fearon, who spoke with us about his paper,
"Ethnicity, insurgency, and civil war," (Fearon JD and Laitin DD,
Amer. Polit. Sci. Rev. 97:75-90, April 2003), Berkeley's
Tim
White, who is a Highly Cited Researcher and in December of 2007 was
named a New Entrant to Essential Science Indicators, Penn
State's
Amanda Spink, who spoke with us about her work on
internet search habits, and UCSF's
Ruth Malone, who spoke with us about her research on
tobacco industry documentation.
The top 20 institutions in Social Sciences are listed in full in the table
below:
Top 20 Institutions in Social
Sciences, general
(Ranked by Citations)