Eighteen scientists from the University of the Free State (UFS) have been named on a global list of leading scientists by
Stanford University in the United States. The list is the result of a study published in
PLOS Biology, a peer-reviewed open-access journal. The
study is titled: A standardised citation metrics author database annotated for scientific field.
With more than six million scientists who have published at least five papers, the list placed the UFS researchers in the elite group of most cited scientists in various disciplines. Five hundred and ninety researchers from South Africa appear on the single year list and 536 researchers on the career list.
Prof Corli Witthuhn, UFS Vice-Rector: Research, congratulated this group of outstanding researchers who make a rich contribution to building the research reputation of the UFS. “Their outstanding achievements impact our national and international standing, and ultimately global university rankings,” she said.
She also expressed her hope that the researchers from mainly the natural, as well as the health sciences, will inspire and mentor younger colleagues to reach the same level of research success.
Citation metrics used and misused
The Stanford University scientists believe that citation metrics are widely used and misused. With this publicly available database, the authors of the article, led by
Prof John Ioannides, strived to allow for a more transparent, comparable, and less error-prone approach to citation metrics. They introduced a new way of ranking scientists according to citations and other metrics but steered away from practices such as self-citations and citation farms where groups of authors cited each other’s papers.
Citation metrics show how often scientists formally reference research outputs of other researchers in the footnotes of their own papers.
Included in the database are the top hundred thousand scientists across 22 scientific fields and 176 subfields. Eight from the UFS are among the top 100 000 scientists in the world (according to data on both the single year and the career lists).
Citation data of more than 23 years
According to the research paper on this study, standardised information on citations, h-index, co-authorship, and citations of papers in different authorship positions are included in the database. Scopus citation data of more than 23 years were used to compile the database in the study.
• Prof Abdon Atangana, Applied Mathematics
• Prof Melanie Walker, Education
• Prof Hendrik Swart, Applied Physics
• Prof J Hölsä, Applied Physics
• Prof Johan Grobbelaar, Marine Biology and Hydrobiology
• Prof A Chapagain, Environmental Engineering
• Prof Louis Scott, Palaeontology
• Prof Muhammad Altaf Khan, Applied Mathematics
• Prof Jeanet Conradie, Inorganic and Nuclear Chemistry
• Prof FB Dejene, Applied Physics
• Prof Robert Schall, Pharmacology and Pharmacy
• Prof RE Kroon, Applied Physics
• Prof Michael D MacNeil, Dairy and Animal Science
In the single-year data set, four of the thirteen scientists were listed in the Applied Physics field. Prof Swart, who is heading the
SARChI Research Chair in Solid State Luminescent and Advanced Materials at the UFS, said being on the list of leading researchers is one of the cherries on the cake of a lifetime of research outputs. He said it is good that there is finally a scientific list of the world’s best scientists.
The career-long data set includes the names of:
• Prof Abdon Atangana, Applied Mathematics
• Prof Louis Scott, Palaeontology
• Prof J Hölsä, Applied Physics
• Prof Johan Grobbelaar, Marine Biology and Hydrobiology
• Prof Robert Schall, Pharmacology and Pharmacy
• Prof HA Snyman, Ecology
• Prof Robert Frater, Respiratory System
• Prof Melanie Walker, Education
• Prof Johan Visser, Geology
• Prof Hendrik Swart, Applied Physics
• Prof James du Preez, Biotechnology
• Prof Michael D MacNeil, Dairy and Animal Science
• Prof Jeanet Conradie, Inorganic and Nuclear Chemistry
• Prof David Roux, General Chemistry
Data annually updated
The authors stated that whole-career metrics place young scientists at a disadvantage. They believe that single-year metrics remove much of this problem, “although again, younger scientists have fewer years of publication history and thus probably fewer papers that can be cited”, they said.
The authors of the Stanford study stated that a citation database is most useful when it can be