The data company Clarivate today published its annually updated list of the most highly cited researchers. This year, two members of the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), Rainer Blatt and Peter Zoller, are among the “Highly Cited Researchers”.
The current list of the most influential scientists in their field for 2022 includes 7,225 researchers from 69 countries and regions. 3,981 in specific disciplines and 3,244 for cross-disciplinary work.
Selected were those researchers from 21 disciplines in the natural and social sciences whose work from 2011 to 2021 was cited most frequently. The sum of all citations was not used as a criterion, as was the case with the first ranking of this kind in 2001. For some years now, Clarivate has only taken into account papers that have been cited particularly frequently by specialist colleagues, so-called "highly cited papers". This category includes one percent of all papers published in a subject area each year.
The researchers included in the list have published a certain number of such "Highly Cited Papers". In addition, the number of all citations of these papers exceeds a certain value. The aim of this study, published annually by Clarivate, is to identify those scientists who play a leading role in their respective fields. This year, Clarivate, in cooperation with Retraction Watch, has expanded the qualitative analysis of the Highly-Cited Researchers list to better identify potential plagiarism, image manipulation or falsified peer reviews.
Peter Zoller, who along with Rainer Blatt and Christian Roos was already listed in the Highly-Cited Ranking in 2021, was also rated as the "Best Scientist" in Austria in 2022 by research.com in its ranking of the world's best scientists* with an h-index of 181. Hans Lassmann and Josef Smolen from the Medical University of Vienna and Nobel Prize winner Anton Zeilinger follow in the other places.