Rockefeller tops 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 researchers. According to the CWTS Leiden Ranking of over 1,400 universities from 72 countries, Rockefeller has the highest percentage of most frequently cited scientific publications as a proportion of the total number of its publications. This impact ranking underscores how the findings of Rockefeller scientists are seen as significant and relevant to others in the scientific community.

Each year, the ranking is conducted by the Netherlands-based Center for Science and Technology Studies of Leiden University. While Rockefeller was not included in the rankings due to a change in eligibility criteria in 2019, every other year since 2016, Rockefeller topped the Leiden ranking in the same categories. Rockefeller has also repeatedly excelled in similar reports such as U-Multirank.

In the 2023 Leiden ranking, which examined the time period of 2018 to 2021, 31% percent of Rockefeller publications were among the top 10 percent most frequently cited of all scientific publications. In second place, MIT, had 23.3 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 percent of university publications in the top one percent. MIT, Princeton, Caltech, and Stanford University 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.