Paper on Highly Cited Researchers

Anyone interested in the evolution of global university rankings should take a look at 'Highly Cited researchers and the Shanghai Ranking' by Lawrence Cram of the Australian National University and Domingo Docampo of the University of Vigo, Spain.

• The paper, which analyses the HiCi indicator, based on Thomson Reuters Highly Cited researchers database, in the Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), notes that the loss or addition of a single highly cited researcher can have a potentially large impact of the ranking of a university, although this would not apply to the top 100 where universities typically have one or two dozen such researchers.

• The paper also provides some economic context that might explain why Thomson Reuters has been so adamant about allowing even the most sensible deviation of its Citation indicator from its InCites system.

"While the focus of this paper is not the commercial aspects of citations databases it is important to understand how commercial drivers might shape the availability of such data. In this respect, the most recently available shareholder earnings presentation for Thompson Reuters reveals a corporate strategy that includes resetting the cost base (i.e. reducing business costs), product simplification and attractive returns to shareholders. These business considerations may have a bearing on the commercial development of citation databases."

• The paper describes the evolution of the Highly Cited Researchers database and some aspects of the new list introduced in 2013. They note that counting by field means that names are repeated and that the number of names in the new list may exceed the number of actual persons.

• The number of highly cited researchers varies between fields, from 276 in Engineering to 401 in Microbiology.

• For some universities, the score in the HiCi indicator in ARWU is very significant. For 13 universities -- 9 in the USA and 4 in Saudi Arabia -- it accounts for 30% of the total score.

• The paper concludes by suggesting that it is time that ARWU considered changing its measurement of citations.

"Significant acrimony accompanies some published comparisons between ARWU and other rankings (Redden, 2013) driven in part by commercial positioning .  Given its status as an academic ranking , it may be prudent for ARWU to consider replacing its HiCi indicator with a measure that is nit sourced from a commercial provider if such a product can be found that satisfies the criteria (objective, open, independent ) used by ARWU."