Breakthroughs, the newsletter of the Feinberg School of Medicine Research Office

February 2024 Newsletter

Clarivate Analytics Announces 2023 Highly Cited Researchers

By Karen Gutzman, Head, Research Assessment and Communications, and Christina Gattone, Research Impact Librarian

Galter Library

Each year, Clarivate Analytics releases a list of highly cited researchers who have “demonstrated significant and broad influence in their fields of research.”  

Below is a list of the Feinberg investigators who made the list for 2023, their appointment at the medical school, and the category they were identified in.  

Clarivate evaluates papers that were published and cited from 2012 to 2022 and ranked in the top one percent by citations for the field and year. 7,125 designations were made to 6,849 highly cited researchers in 2023, with 3,793 in specific fields and 3,332 for cross-field performance.   

Thirty-eight Northwestern investigators are included on this 2023 list and represent departments across the university; twelve of these researchers are from Feinberg. This year, Northwestern ranked 34th in the world for the number of highly cited researchers.  

The specific fields that Clarivate Analytics utilizes for classification are the 22 fields that are delineated in the Essential Science Indicators (ESI), a database focused on emerging science trends that is updated every two months and contains a 10-year rolling file. They determine the number of researchers to be selected in each field by taking the square root of the authors that are listed in that field’s highly cited papers.  

The thresholds for fields related to Feinberg are noted in the table below: 

Essential Science Indicator Field 

Number of Highly Cited Researchers 

Social Sciences 

230 

Molecular Biology & Genetics 

186 

Materials Science 

232 

Cross-Field 

3,332 

Clinical Medicine 

477 

Clarivate began identifying researchers with cross-field impact in 2018 to recognize individuals who “might contribute multiple highly cited papers in several different fields but would not register enough highly cited papers in any single ESI field to be considered for selection.” They add that this “keeps our list contemporary and relevant as it tends to capture younger researchers and those who work at the intersection of different scientific or scholarly domains.” Four Feinberg faculty are recognized for their cross-field contributions. 

Read the full report on Highly Cited Researchers for 2023. 

Learn More 

The Metrics and Impact Core at Galter Health Sciences Library can help you track your work and identify and communicate the impact of your research. 

Please contact Karen Gutzman (karen.gutzman@northwestern.edu), Mao Soulakis (mao.soulakis@northwestern.edu), or Christina Gattone (christina.gattone@northwestern.edu) to learn more about using metrics to tell your science story.