Rockefeller leads an international ranking of research impact

Rockefeller has topped a survey that weighs what percentage of an institution’s scientific publications are frequently cited by other scientists. According to the CWTS Leiden Ranking of over 1,300 universities from 69 countries, Rockefeller has the highest percentage of most frequently cited scientific publications as a proportion of the total number of its publications. This global ranking of research impact underscores how the discoveries of Rockefeller researchers are seen as significant and applicable by other in the scientific community.

The ranking is conducted annually by the Netherlands-based Center for Science and Technology Studies of Leiden University. While Rockefeller was not included in the rankings because of a change in the eligibility criteria in 2019, every other year since 2016, Rockefeller topped the Leiden ranking in the same categories. In recent years, Rockefeller has also topped similar lists in reports such as U-Multirank.

In the 2022 Leiden ranking, which examined the time period of 2017 to 2020, 33% percent of Rockefeller publications were among the top 10 percent most frequently cited of all scientific publications. In second place, MIT, had 23.7 percent; and Princeton, Caltech, and Stanford University were close behind. When measuring the proportion of publications in the top one percent, Rockefeller also took first place with 5.7 percent of university publications in the top one percent. MIT, Changsha University of Science and Technology, Princeton, and Caltech were also in the top five.

The Leiden Ranking’s methodology accounts for differences between scientific fields in citation and collaboration practices. Institutional publication data was collected from the Web of Science database.