ESSAY: PROCESS - AND RESULTS

CHOOSING THOMSON REUTERS CITATION LAUREATES:

THE PROCESS AND THE RESULTS

By David Pendlebury, Research Services, Thomson Reuters

In anticipation of the Nobel Prize announcements for 2008, which will begin on October 6th, Thomson Reuters (NYSE: TRI) is revealing its own list of laureates — in this case Citation Laureates.

Citation Laureates have been cited so often in the last two or more decades that these scientists typically rank in the top 0.1% in their research areas. Not only do Citation Laureates have stratospheric citation totals, they also typically write multiple high-impact reports, and do so over many years.

Correlating citations and peer esteem

Numerous studies in the past three decades have shown a strong correlation between citations in the literature and peer esteem, often reflected in professional awards, such as the Nobel Prize. This should cause no surprise. Citations have been likened to repayments of intellectual debts, so persons who have accumulated such credits from their peers are often those whom these peers nominate for prizes and other honors.

Eugene Garfield has studied the correlation between high citation frequency and the receipt of prestigious prizes, especially the Nobel Prize. A review of several of these studies appears on his Website: http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v15p116y1992-93.pdf and http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v15p127y1992-93.pdf.

It is clear that the choices of the Nobel Committees are more complex than simply identifying highly cited or most-cited scientists. Generally, a Committee looks for an area of research to recognize, and then identifies the key persons responsible for the advance, even if the course of selection is determined by dossiers on individual scientists nominated by their peers. As Harriet Zuckerman, the sociologist of science and author of a fundamental study on this subject, Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States (New York: Free Press, 1977), has pointed out: "Every year, more scientists are eligible for Nobel Prizes than can win them." She continues: "This means that there has always been an accumulation of 'uncrowned' laureates who are peers of the prize-winners in every sense except that of having the award" (see page 48).

Thus, in choosing our "picks" for the Nobel Prize in 2008 (or thereafter) we looked first at citation counts and at number of high-impact papers, but then also at discoveries or themes that might be considered worthy of special recognition by the Nobel Committee. In each of four areas — Physiology or Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, and Economics — we have made three new choices. But as a supplement to this, and in recognition of Dr. Zuckerman's observation, we are also providing the names of those we have 'tipped' previously who have yet to win the Nobel Prize. If one or more of our picks should win the Nobel this year — as two of four did last year when Thomson Scientific made its choices (Medicine and Physics, see here) — it is more luck than skill, but by focusing on the most-cited scientists we hope to, as it were, better our luck.

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David Pendlebury joined the Institute for Scientific Information, now Thomson Reuters, in 1983, after graduate studies in history. He began as a translator and indexer and later worked with ISI"s founder Eugene Garfield on personal research projects. In 1987, he developed the Research Section pages of the newspaper The Scientist. Two years later, he joined the company"s Research Services Group, under Henry Small, to launch the newsletter Science Watch, now in its 19th year. Until 2004, Pendlebury was Manager of the department's contract research services for government agencies, universities, corporations, and science publishers worldwide. With Small and other departmental staff, he designed and developed Thomson Rueters' Essential Science Indicators, now the primary database for quantitative analysis of performance and trends in global research. After a sabbatical of 18 months, Pendlebury rejoined the department and now focuses on special research projects from his home in the high desert of central Oregon.