Abstract
A high level of citations is generally associated with the exceptional influence of an article. Authors of several highly cited articles are thus considered and scrutinized as influential members within their scientific discipline and beyond when their activity spans several disciplines. Identifying individuals who have made outstanding contributions to science is the motivation behind the Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list published annually by a commercial company. This article is devoted to the case of highly cited researchers affiliated with French institutions. We study the characteristics of the HCR population: productivity, gender bias, career and persistence on the list, collaboration network, and scientific integrity. Then, from the annual lists of HCRs from 2014 to 2022, we examine what the number of HCRs tells us about France's place in the world scientific arena, its evolution over a decade, and its geographical and institutional distribution. We discuss whether the population of French HCRs constitutes a scientific elite by examining the case of Mathematics. Finally, we discuss several indicators which could be used to verify that a researcher is close to the threshold to enter the list.
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Web of Science raw data used in this study have been made available under license by Clarivate Analytics. The authors are not allowed to redistribute WoS data which therefore cannot be made available. All other data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Notes
In the Medical disciplines, for French physicians, we did not use the year of their thesis defense but rather the year of obtaining a doctorate, which may push back the average academic age for this category by a few years. It should be noted that for studies calculating the academic age from the year of first publication, there could be a difference of one or two years with our calculations based on the year of Ph.D., the first publication most often occurring before Graduation.
This is not exactly the official list since the status of Univ Lyon has not been confirmed yet. One caveat though: the indicator of the number of HCRs is affected here both by disciplinary biases (over-representation of the medical and health sector) and by the imprecision of the location of personnel of national research organizations.
The Q-parameter of the Q-model accounts for the individual-level ability to make high-quality scientific contributions and is not affected by time. The higher the Q parameter is, the higher the probability that researchers will publish high-quality scientific papers.
The Q parameter is based on the geometric mean of the citations that a scientific oeuvre of an individual researcher receives (after ten years of publication).
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Funding
The work of Domingo Docampo has received financial support from the Xunta de Galicia (Centro singular de investigación de Galicia accreditation 2019–2022) and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund—ERDF).
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LC: conceptualization and data curation, LC, DE, DD: formal analysis and investigation, LC: writing—original draft, DE, DD: writing—review and editing, DE, DD: supervision.
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Chaignon, L., Docampo, D. & Egret, D. In search of a scientific elite: highly cited researchers (HCR) in France. Scientometrics 128, 5801–5827 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04805-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-04805-3