The top 2% ...
"Look," I said, "apparently I’m in the top 2% of the most impactful scientists in the world!"
"That’s nice," my wife replied, with her usual disdain for all things as mundane as this—a trait I've come to appreciate over the years. The sort of thing that keeps you grounded. You know, memento mori and all that.
What got me excited was the Stanford/Elsevier list, highlighting the top 2% of the most cited scientists across the globe. FYI, it’s not actually from Stanford, but people throw that in to give the list a bit more prestige! It’s a list put together by a Stanford professor and published in Elsevier, designed to provide standardized info on citations and publication impact using a composite indicator (c-score).
Even they admit in their website: "Citation metrics are widely used and misused." So, naturally, I spent half an hour misusing the list for my own amusement!
First, I made a list of all the academics in the Structures section at Imperial who made the cut. See below. Out of 13, five of us are on it—not bad! The orange column shows the overall ranking without self-citations. The top performer is ranked 1,856th, and the last is 201,729th —almost all are professors. But hey, I’m sitting pretty at a stellar 136,255th!
“Oh, 136,255th, when you put it that way, it doesn’t sound too impressive, does it?” my wife said. “There must be a lot of scientists in the world.”
“Well, let’s break it down by discipline,” I said. “In Civil Engineering,” I pointed to the yellow column in the same chart (above), “I’m ranked 589th,” I announced, trying to muster some confidence to toot my own horn. “Ah,” came the reply.
I then tried to compile the list for everyone in my entire department (see below). I might’ve missed someone, but it looks like one section doesn’t have anyone on the list, while Materials—being the smallest section—has the same number of entries as Structures. Interesting!
It's also interesting to note that the way fields or disciplines are categorized aligns pretty well with our departmental structure by sections at Imperial. People in Structures are mostly listed under "Civil Engineering," Geotechnics under "Geological & Geomatic Engineering," Materials under "Building & Construction," and so on, with a few exceptions.
Another interesting detail is how self-citation practices differ across subfields. You can see that in the green column as a percentage of total citations. In Structural Engineering, for example, we seem to hover around 18-20% self-citations, while Materials stays consistently lower at about 8%.
I was about to waste another half hour seeing how other universities and departments did when I spotted a familiar name on the list. I’ve marked the first figure below so you can see: Prof. Nathan Newmark!
Now, if you're telling me I rank higher than Newmark in anything—and you can look him up if he's not in your field—I can confidently call that total, monumental bullsh*t! I slammed my laptop shut and turned to my wife, "Shall we go pick up the kids from school? This is pure nonsense."