Thomson Reuters media corporation has published a list of scientists who are the most frequently cited by their fellow researchers. Among the scientists that earned this distinction are quantum physicists Rainer Blatt, Rudolf Grimm, Christian Roos and Peter Zoller from Innsbruck
Thomson Reuters‘ current list consists of 3,200 international researchers. The list identified researchers from 21 broad fields of the sciences and social sciences whose work published between 2002 and 2012 was most frequently cited. This time, contrary to the first ranking of its kind from 2001, the criteria for being listed was not based on the total citations to the papers. Thomson Reuters decided to take a different approach and considered only articles and reviews that were cited most frequently by their peers, so called ‘Highly Cited Papers’. This category is defined as those papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and year. Researchers included in this list must have published a certain number of these ‘Highly Cited Papers’, which is interpreted as a mark of exceptional impact. In addition, the researchers needed enough total citations to their papers in the field in which they were considered. The goal of Thomson Reuters‘ report is to highlight countries, institutions and researchers on the cutting edge of science and the best and brightest scientific minds of our time.
Excellent ranking of IQOQI researchers
The Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) is very pleased about the results of Highly Cited Researchers 2014: Four researchers from the IQOQI earned the distinction of “Highly Cited Researchers” - Rainer Blatt, Rudolf Grimm, Christian Roos and Peter Zoller. A total of six scientists from the field of physics researching in Austria are ranked on Thomson Reuters’ list. “We are very excited about this success,” says experimental physicist Rudolf Grimm. “It shows that by establishing a critical mass of excellent researchers in this scientific field, we are headed in the right direction. Physics research in Innsbruck is highly renowned internationally, which attracts bright and promising junior scientists. And this, in turn, guarantees the future of research in Innsbruck.” One of the foundations for the researchers‘ success was laid 10 years ago with the establishment of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. It enables the physicists to carry out long-term and high-risk basic research, which often is a pre-requisite for scientific breakthroughs.