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Rockefeller takes first place in global ranking of scientific impact

For the third consecutive year, Rockefeller tops a survey measuring the impact of university research publications. According to the CWTS Leiden Ranking of over 900 universities from 55 different countries, Rockefeller has the highest percentage of frequently cited scientific publications.

The ranking, released on May 16, was conducted by the Center for Science and Technology Studies of Leiden University in the Netherlands. It is based on publications indexed in a Thomson Reuters database between 2013 and 2016.

Rockefeller ranks higher than MIT, Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton, which take the next four spots. Among Rockefeller’s total publications in the three-year period studied, 5.2 percent were considered extremely high impact—in the top one percent of those most widely cited—and 31.5 percent were considered high impact—in the top 10 percent of those most cited. The figures for the other institutions in the top-five group range from 3.1 to 4.1 percent and 22.1 to 25.1 percent, respectively.

The Leiden Ranking evaluates universities on the impact of research conducted by their scientists as well as their involvement in scientific collaboration. It focuses strictly on citation impact, using a methodology that accounts for differences between scientific fields in citation and collaboration practices. The Web of Science database is produced by Clarivate Analytics.