Three researchers who develop their scientific work in centers of the "Universitat Politècnica de València" and the "Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)" have been selected to join the prestigious list of Highly Cited Researchers Thomson Reuters 2014, which identifies the 3,200 most contemporary researchers influential in the world. It is specifically Avelino Corma and Hermenegildo García, both researchers at the Institute of Chemical Technology, and Ismael Rafols, researcher at Ingenio.

Highly Cited Researchers 2014 represents some of world’s leading scientific minds. Over three thousand researchers earned the distinction by writing the greatest numbers of reports officially designated by Essential Science Indicators℠ as Highly Cited Papers—ranking among the top 1% most cited for their subject field and year of publication, earning them the mark of exceptional impact.

The old list, first issued in 2001, identified more than 7,000 researchers who were the most cited in one or more of 21 broad fields of the sciences and social sciences, fields similar to those used in the Essential Sciences Indicators database. This analysis considered articles and reviews published in Web of Science-indexed journals from 1981 through 1999. Approximately 250 researchers in each field were selected based on total citations to their papers published during this period. An update in 2004 took into account papers published from 1984 to 2003 and cited during the same period, and additional names were added to supplement the original list.

A selection of influential researchers based on total citations gives preference to well-established scientists and social sciences researchers who have produced many publications. It is only logical that the more papers generated, generally the more citations received, especially if the papers have had many years to accumulate citations. Thus, this method of selection favors senior researchers with extensive publication records. It sometimes identifies authors who may, in fact, have relatively few individual papers cited at high frequency. Nonetheless, total citations is a measure of gross influence that often correlates well with community perceptions of research leaders within a field. Such was the nature of the prior lists of highly cited researchers.

More information:

• Newspaper Levante-emv
• Highly Cited Researchers