Influential list of highly cited researchers now shuts out more scientists: here's why

"The creators of an influential list of highly cited researchers have shaken up their methodology this year, taking a swipe at scientists who associate with those linked to possible ethical breaches. The new rules have allowed the field of mathematics to return to the list, after being excluded for the past two years owing to concerns over suspicious citation patterns."

"The Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list is produced by the multinational data-analytics company Clarivate, which also owns the Web of Science database. The list aims to recognize contemporary researchers with "significant and broad influence", who are among the authors of papers that are in the top 1% in their field by number of citations. The programme recognizes thousands of individuals each year across 21 natural- and social-science fields and factors into influential rankings of universities."

""It's quite a good idea. It's a big cleaning," says Lauranne Chaignon, a bibliometrician at PSL University in Paris, who has studied the HCR list. There is, she adds, a small chance of removing a deserving scientist. This year's list, announced today, recognizes 6,868 people. Starting around 2016, HCR organizers noticed a rise in suspicious activity in the data used to compile the list, says David Pendlebury, head of research analysis at Clarivate's Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)."

Clarivate compiles the Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list to recognize researchers whose papers rank among the top 1% by citations across 21 fields. The HCR methodology now excludes any paper with an author removed from the previous year's list for research-integrity issues. The change reduced rewards for habitual coauthors of excluded researchers and allowed mathematics to reappear after a two-year exclusion for suspicious citation patterns. The year's list recognizes 6,868 individuals. Bibliometrician Lauranne Chaignon called the move a major cleanup while noting a small risk of removing deserving scientists. Clarivate reported rising suspicious citation activity since 2016, concentrated in certain maths subfields.

Read at Nature