Four UCL IRDR academics ranked in global top 2% of highly cited scientists in their field
8 November 2021
Professor David Alexander, Professor Ilan Kelman, Professor Maureen Fordham, and Dr Bayes Ahmed have been listed in the world’s top 2% of scientists in their respective fields in 2020.
The academics also saw an increase in their positions in this year's rankings compared to last year (2019), reflecting UCL IRDR’s continued global scale impact on research, collaboration, outreach, education and academic excellence.
The ranking was based on a recently published article (Baas et al., 2021) that used citations from Scopus and assessed scientists for their total number of papers (1960–2020) and career-long citation (1996–2020) impact within their disciplines.
Career-long impact
Professor David Alexander, with 108 Scopus-indexed publications (first article published in 1979), has been ranked 24th out of 18,114 scientists in the field of Strategic, Defence and Security Studies. It has placed him within the top 0.13% of scientists in his discipline.
Professor Ilan Kelman, with 201 Scopus-indexed publications (first article published in 2001), has been ranked 48th out of 18,114 scientists in the field of Strategic, Defence and Security Studies. It has placed him within the top 0.26% of scientists in his discipline.
Professor Maureen Fordham, with 48 Scopus-indexed publications (first article published in 1991), has been ranked 266th out of 18,114 scientists in the field of Strategic, Defence and Security Studies. It has placed her within the top 1.47% of scientists in her discipline.
Year 2020 citation impact
Professor Ilan Kelman, with 201 Scopus-indexed publications (first article published in 2001), has been ranked 14th out of 18,114 scientists in the field of Strategic, Defence and Security Studies. It has placed him within the top 0.07% of highly-cited scientists in his discipline in 2020.
Professor David Alexander, with 108 Scopus-indexed publications (first article published in 1979), has been ranked 15th out of 18,114 scientists in the field of Strategic, Defence and Security Studies. It has placed him within the top 0.08% of highly-cited scientists in his discipline in 2020.
Dr Bayes Ahmed, with 32 Scopus-indexed publications (first article published in 2012), has been ranked 379th out of 52,403 scientists in the field of Geological and Geomatics Engineering. It has placed him within the top 0.72% of highly-cited scientists in his discipline in 2020. This is an indication that Dr Ahmed is an emerging top scientist in the field of Geological and Geomatics Engineering.
Professor Maureen Fordham, with 48 Scopus-indexed publications (first article published in 1991), has been ranked 343rd out of 18,114 scientists in the field of Strategic, Defence and Security Studies. It has placed her within the top 1.89% of highly-cited scientists in her discipline in 2020.
The authors of the article created a publicly available database of the top 2% of scientists of their main subfield discipline that provides standardised information on total citations (self-citations excluded), h-index, number of single authored papers, number of distinct citing papers, co-authorship adjusted index, ratio of total citations to distinct citing papers, number of papers 1960–2020 that have been cited at least once, self-citation percentage, citations to papers in different authorship positions and a composite indicator.
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Reference
Baas, Jeroen; Boyack, Kevin; Ioannidis, John P.A. (2021), “August 2021 data-update for "Updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators"”, Mendeley Data, V3, doi: 10.17632/btchxktzyw.3