Congratulations to the five WMG academics who have been named in Stanford University’s global list recognising the top 2% of the world’s leading scientists.

The scientists were classified into 22 scientific fields and 176 sub-fields using Science-Metrix journal classification system. Led by Professor John Ioannidis of Stanford University, the research team has created a database of over 100,000 top scientists of the world based on standardised citation indicators, which include information on citations, an individual’s scientific research output or H-index, co-authorship, and a composite indicator for career-long impact.

The analysis was conducted using citations from Scopus along with data assessing scientists for career-long citation impact till the year 2019 and for citation impact during a single calendar year. The study has been published in PLOS Biology. According to Professor Ioannidis, this is the first classification that systematically ranks all the most-cited scientists in each and every scientific field to a sufficient ranking depth.

The WMG academics featured on the list are:

 Darek Ceglarek, Professor of Digital Lifecycle Management, (sub-field: ‘Industrial Engineering and Automation’)

Claire Davis, Professor of Steels Processing, (sub-field: ‘Materials’)

Richard McMahon, Professor of Power Electronics, (sub-field: ‘Electrical and Electronic Engineering’)

Tony McNally, Professor in Nanocomposites, (sub-field: ‘Polymers’)

Ton Peijs, Professor of Polymer Technology, (sub-field: ‘Materials’)

Professor Darek Ceglarek, explained: It is an interesting study which standardised citation indicators across all scientists and scientific disciplines for all scientists who published at least five papers. This was needed as there has been a challenge in interpreting citation indicators due to large differences in numbers of citations between different fields. For example, the differences between fields can range more than three times between engineering and clinical medicine; or even up to nine times between engineering and physics.

“This of course depends on a total volume of scientific publications in a given field, but also on the relevance of other aspects of ‘broader impact’ within a field. For example, in engineering broader impact includes not only scientific contributions as measured by citations but also broader economic impact and impact to society. However, we need to take the data with caution as research importance and impact are not easy to measure.”

Margot James, Executive Chair, WMG adds: “I am immensely proud of all of our academics, and want to congratulate the five Professors on being placed in the top 2% globally, they represent the very best of British academia. It’s wonderful that WMG students and industrial partners have direct access to their expertise.”

View the full list here.