Michael Gastpar - one of world's most cited scientists

According to Thomson Reuters, more than nine million scientists and scholars publish their findings in academic journals, producing over two million papers annually. This proliferation has led to many efforts to qualify the impact of research. Despite the challenges, Reuters publishes annually The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds, an overview of the most cited researchers in the world.

The criterion of inclusion is the scientist’s ability to inspire and challenge fellow researchers, as demonstrated by the frequency and number of citations, which attest to the impact on the scientific community. Only authors who have an exceptional influence are selected for their consistency in producing papers that win peer approval, established through high citation counts, number of citations per paper and for ranking at the top one percent of the most cited globally.

The World’s Most Influential Scientific Mindsreport is based on data collected during an 11-year period, analysed and published on Reuters’ Highly Cited Researchers website, with figures drawn from the Essential Science Indicators based on scientific articles indexed by Thomson Scientific.

The report covers 21 fields of study varying from clinical medicine to business and economics. The specialty areas differ in size, as certain subjects are covered by numerous journals and a larger population of authors, who have a consequently greater number of highly cited papers. As stated by Reuters, the size of a field in terms of the number of highly cited papers has been factored into the count of authors featured for each field, resulting in the preponderance of the number of citations required to qualify a scientist.