For the past few years, I have seen people sharing on social media that “Stanford University declared them the World’s Top 2% of Scientists the World”. I was glad to see that academics from my own country has ranked world’s top positions. The national dailies also published news with eye-catchy headlines during that time. So, it’s something for which I should feel proud. So, I congratulated people for their achievements at that time as well.
One post caught my attention recently and forced me to dig for more information about this so-called World Top Scientist’s Ranking! As a small learner in the academic field, I am deeply concerned about the World’s Top 2% Scientist ranking. While it may seem helpful in identifying top researchers, it is essential to consider the limitations and potential biases inherent in using citation metrics as the sole basis for evaluation.
Firstly, this is not ranking to recognize the best scientists in the world! This appears based on a research paper done by Stanford scientists. Their research paper titled “A standardized citation metrics author database annotated for the scientific field (2019),” published in the PLOS Biology journal proposes a new approach to assessing the scientific contributions of researchers by creating a standardized citation metrics author database annotated for the scientific field. This is a standardized citation metric like the AD Scientific Index, Scopus, or Web of Science Citation Matrix.
In this paper, the authors acknowledged the current problems with using traditional metrics such as the h-index, which have limitations in assessing a researcher’s contributions within a specific scientific field. To overcome these limitations, the authors propose the creation of a standardized database, which would annotate a researcher’s publications with their respective scientific field, thus enabling a more accurate assessment of the impact of their work within that field.
To test the proposed approach, the authors created the database by extracting metadata from over 10 million publications from the Web of Science database and annotating them with scientific fields using a machine learning approach. They also created an author database, which included the authors’ affiliations, publications, and citation metrics. Using this standardized database, the authors assessed the scientific contributions of researchers in neuroscience and compared it with the traditional metrics. They found that the standardized database provided a more accurate representation of a researcher’s contributions within the field of neuroscience. The paper concludes that a standardized citation metrics author database annotated for the scientific field is a promising approach for assessing scientific contributions and could help evaluate researchers for funding, promotions, and other academic purposes. The authors also emphasize the importance of transparency in creating such databases to ensure that they are reliable, unbiased, and can be used by the scientific community for evaluation purposes.
In summary, this paper proposes a new approach to assessing scientific contributions using a standardized citation metrics author database annotated for the scientific field, which has the potential to provide a more accurate representation of a researcher’s contributions within a specific scientific field. The paper also highlights the importance of transparency in creating such databases to ensure that they are reliable and unbiased and can be used by the scientific community for evaluation purposes.
So, it would be misleading to highlight this as the Worlds Top Scientist Ranking!
Secondly, citation metrics are not a comprehensive or accurate measure of research impact. They may be biased towards established or prolific researchers or those who work in more highly cited fields and do not consider factors such as the quality or originality of research output.
Thirdly, the ranking methodology needs more transparency, with little information on the specific metrics or the selected researchers included in the analysis. This raises concerns about the potential for errors or inaccuracies in the data used for the ranking and the potential for manipulation of citation metrics.
Moreover, rankings such as this can have unintended negative consequences, incentivizing researchers to focus on highly cited or popular research topics rather than pursuing innovative or high-risk research that may have more significant long-term impacts.
In conclusion, while the World Top 2% Scientist ranking may provide some valuable insights, it is crucial to consider it with caution alongside other research impact and contribution measures. Researchers should focus on building a diverse and comprehensive portfolio of research output and engagement rather than solely relying on rankings such as this to evaluate their work.
