Clarivate Analytics has just unveiled its Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list for 2024. Interestingly, both Portugal and Norway have 18 HCRs. However, when assessing their performance through the Stanford Scientist Ranking, particularly within the top 0.5% of researchers, Norway shows a remarkable 500% advantage over Portugal. List below. This stark disparity suggests a significant flaw in the methodology behind the Clarivate HCR list.
It is worth noting that the Stanford Scientist ranking, is the only one worldwide that satisfies three critical conditions: accurate author disambiguation, the exclusion of self-citations, and fractional counting of contributions. Furthermore, this ranking effectively addresses a major flaw in Clarivate's HCR list—its bias toward specific scientific disciplines. This issue persists despite the introduction of the Cross-Field category in recent years, which has failed to resolve the problem.
Chaignon et al. (2023) unleashed a scathing rebuke of the HCR list, condemning its methodology for systematically erasing groundbreaking contributions in innovative or niche fields. They singled out the shocking exclusion of Alain Aspect, the French Nobel laureate in Physics (2022), as a glaring example of its shortcomings. Even more damning, the Clarivate HCR list has inexplicably omitted dozens of other Nobel Prize-winning scientists, further undermining its credibility.
Declaration of Competing Interests - In November 2020, I criticized Clarivate's Highly Cited Researchers list for its blatant bias toward specific scientific disciplines. A year later, in November 2021, I reiterated this condemnation, emphasizing that their token measure—excluding papers with more than 30 affiliations—amounts to little more than window dressing. It utterly fails to address the list's core and glaring flaw: the stubborn refusal to implement fractional counting. https://pacheco-torgal.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-flawed-clarivate-list-of.html
PS - Revising the Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers list to incorporate fractional counting while ensuring an unbiased evaluation across all scientific disciplines would undoubtedly redefine the Shanghai Ranking of universities. This reform has the potential to curtail the dominance of a powerful nation within that ranking. The pressing question remains: which country will suffer the most when these entrenched biases are finally dismantled?
- Switzerland.........108 scientists per million inhabitants in Top 0.5% Stanford Ranking
- Denmark............. 84
- UK........................77
- USA......................75
- Sweden................70
- Australia...............65
- Netherlands..........63
- Canada.................60
- Finland..................53
- Israel.....................45
- Norway..................41
- New Zealand.........41
- Singapore.............39
- Belgium.................35
- Germany...............33
- Ireland...................32
- Austria...................31
- Iceland..................27
- France...................19
- Italy........................15
- Luxembourg..........13
- Greece..................12
- Slovenia.................9
- Cyprus....................9
- Portugal..................8
