The rockefeller university

The CWTS Leiden Ranking, a closely watched indicator of university impact in the sciences, has placed Rockefeller at the top of its annual list of institutions that produce widely cited research papers.

The rankings, which measure how many of an institution’s publications are among the world’s most widely cited, show that Rockefeller’s influence in the biosciences is strong. The 2026 Leiden Ranking Open Edition found that 29.0 percent of all papers published by Rockefeller scientists between 2021 and 2024 were among the top 10 percent most frequently cited papers globally. That figure—29 percent—is higher than any other university in the survey, including second place MIT, with 23.0 percent, and third place Princeton, with 21.1 percent.

This is the 16th consecutive year Rockefeller has ranked first by this metric, according to Leiden. Last year, which measured impact between 2020 and 2023, 28.7 percent of the university’s papers were among the 10 percent most cited globally. Rockefeller has also repeatedly excelled in similar reports such as U-Multirank.

The findings underscore how research from Rockefeller scientists influences scientists—and science—around the world.

When measuring the proportion of publications in the top one percent, Rockefeller also took first place with 5.3 percent of university publications in the top one percent. MIT, Princeton University, Caltech, Hunan University of Technology in China, and Stanford University were also highly ranked.

Institutional publication data was based on open data from the OpenAlex database.