More Rankings Stuff -- Citation Rankings

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by BillDayson, Oct 31, 2009.

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  1. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    This doesn't have very much to do with DL, but I found it kind of interesting. It's the world citation rankings in many different scientific research areas published by Thompson at -

    http://esi-topics.com

    Some 'usual-suspect' schools were prominent in most of the lists, roughly correlating to the overall leaders on the Shanghai and THES lists. Cambridge, Harvard and Stanford for example. But the precise order of their rankings was fluid.

    Interestingly to me, many of the lists also included some specialty institutes and less-prestigious schools that obviously have special strengths in particular areas.

    Harvard was #1 in apoptosis, but my favorite new and still-California-approved PhD-grantor managed to burst in at #4 in the world, beating out MIT (#6). (MIT won a medicine/physiology Nobel prize in the subject in 2002, I believe.) That was cool.

    The U. of Colorado finished #1 in the world in Bose-Einstein condensates, despite that fact that the THES (which doesn't particularly like American public universities) placed CU at #186 overall.

    There are distinct regional specialties. For earthquakes, California's rockin' - the USGS is #1, Cal Tech #2, USC #3, UCLA #4 (when LA slides into the sea, they will understand precisely what's happening), with Stanford #7 and Berkeley #10 in the world. The U. of Nevada at Reno managed an impressive #14 spot. UCSD is #15, UCSC #16, UCSB #18, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory #19.

    On the other hand, if coral reef ecology is your thing, then follow the yellow-brick-road to Oz. James Cook U. of Northern Queensland is #1 in the world by a solid margin. (It obviously takes advantage of being a warm tropical port adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef.) The Australian Inst. of Marine Science is #2, U. Sydney #9, Australian National U. #14, U. Queensland #15, and the Australian Museum #20.

    For volcanoes, the USGS, U. Hawaii and Cal Tech are 1-2-3, but England manages a very respectable #5 for the Open University, #6 for the U. Bristol and #8 for Cambridge. It's interesting that the Open U. has powered into the British lead as if it was a pyroclastic flow. Perhaps they take advantage of having a captive active volcano to observe on Britain's Montserrat island territory in the Caribbean.

    In gene silencing, Harvard is #1 again, but interestingly the NY-Regents accredited Cold Spring Harbor is #2. The Watson School of Biological Science is listed at #14, and that's CSHL's graduate program. Combining CSHL and Watson pushes CSHL into world leadership in this subject. Not too bad for an 'NA' school.

    Regarding the planet Mars, NASA is way out in front, followed by Cal Tech which hosts JPL which runs the Mars rovers. (They are still going!!!) Arizona is prominent in this (maybe because a lot of it looks like Mars) with U. Arizona #3 and Arizona State #5.

    In optoelectronics the Russians make their move, with the Russian Academy of Sciences #1 and the S.I.Vavilov State Optical Institute #2 in the world.

    In photonics MIT leads, followed by UCLA, but the U. of Glasgow surges to #3 and the U. of Toronto to #4. England's U. of Bath is #7.

    In stem cells, the U. of Washington is #4, but if you combine it with Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (#9) which collaborates in joint programs with UW, UDub jumps right over Stanford and Johns Hopkins into the #2 slot, behind Harvard again.

    The Hall effect pulls the U. of Tokyo into the #1 slot, followed by Princeton.

    With tropical storms, it's NOAA in the lead, followed by #2 Colorado State (a meterology powerhouse) and the #3 U. of Miami.
     
  2. Woho

    Woho New Member

    I like the idea of detecting research trends by this metrics. But unfortunatly they are not even near real time and the latest seem to be from Jan 08.
     
  3. BillDayson

    BillDayson New Member

    There's more recent data, but you have to pay to see it. These are the archives that Thompson makes available for free.

    I suspect that there's quite a bit of dynamic reshuffling among the leadership group over time. Exciting experimental results and a succession of bomb-shell papers will propel institutions upwards bigtime. Meanwhile other strong programs might be experiencing a slow spell.

    But I'd guess that the membership in the leadership group probably remains more constant than institutions' relative positions within it. If a university doesn't have much happening on gene expression, organic semiconductors or black holes right now, they aren't likely to be leading players five years down the line either. There probably will be a few dropouts from the leaders though, and a few rising institutions new to the top 25.

    The regional concentrations are probably more stable as well. California will still be rockin' in seismology in ten years and Australia will doubtless still be a leader in tropical marine biology.
     

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