Publications and impact

ION Publications and examples of research excellence and impact.

See also REF 2021 for further examples of research excellence and impact.

ION academics recognised in 2025 annual global list of influential researchers

UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology academics feature in Clarivate’s annual ‘Highly Cited Researchers List’ 2025, recognising authors of the most influential research papers around the world.

Publications 2024

  • In the calendar year 2024, Institute staff published 1801 papers; 56 were published in the top 50 of all scientific journals (ranked by ESI impact factors), including Nature, Science, Lancet and BMJ.
  • 12 of our professors are named as being among the most influential academics in the world (Clarivate Web of Science’s ‘Highly Cited Researchers 2024’). Please see our news item for further details.
  • Impact case studies (from the UCL Impact website)
  • #MadeAtUCL campaign ground-breaking research and discoveries

Please see UCL Discovery for a list of departmental publications by year. You can also search for specific authors, titles etc within UCL Discovery. Publication data for individuals within the Department is also available within their UCL Profile.

 

UCL ranked as a leader in academic-corporate and academic collaborations in Alzheimer’s research

Elsevier has published a new metric for Alzheimer’s research, which finds that UCL is #3 in the world for Alzheimer’s research (2013-2018), while also being a leader in academic-corporate and academic collaborations. Elsevier’s report entitled Alzheimer’s Disease Research Insights: Impact, Trends, Opportunities finds:

  • UCL is amongst the top three global institutions for scholarly output on Alzheimer’s research between 2013-2018, with Harvard University and the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale narrowly above. This makes UCL the leading institution for Alzheimer’s research output in the UK.
  • Globally, Elsevier’s report finds that UCL is the top university for academic-corporate collaborations in Alzheimer’s research, with 15.2% of UCL research involving a corporate.
  • UCL is the second most prolific institution for international academic collaborations (75.7% of UCL’s output of research in Alzheimer’s disease between 2013-2018).
  • Read the full report

RAND report shows that UCL has the highest share of highly cited publications in Neurology in England

An independent report by RAND (2015) which examined highly-cited research, i.e. research publications falling into the top 20% for citations in their year and field, showed that UCL has the highest share of Highly Cited Publications (HCPs) in Neuroimaging (21.1%), Neurosciences (18.1%) and Clinical neurology (15.6%) and in the Dementias Highlight Area (15.5%) – in all cases significantly more than the nearest competitor.

Neuroimaging is one of only two subject areas covered in the analysis where one HEI has over 20% of all HCPs