Field rankings for Germany

	Field	Papers	Citations	Citations per paper	World average	% +/–
1	Physics	98,066	1,210,520	12.34	8.82	+40
2	Geosciences	25,475	324,708	12.75	9.39	+36
3	Space science	18,392	340,917	18.54	14.10	+31
4	Plant/animal sciences	37,592	366,504	9.75	7.49	+30
5	Engineering	46,223	255,101	5.52	4.43	+25
6	Chemistry	97,452	1,9,355	13.13	10.61	+24
6	Materials science	34,250	4,083	8.00	6.44	+24
8	Environment/ecology	15,519	201,298	12.97	10.70	+21
9	Microbiology	15,269	284,294	18.62	15.60	+19
9	Mathematics	20,034	79,492	3.97	3.34	+19
11	Biochemistry	44,951	891,082	19.82	17.04	+16
12	Molecular biology	,181	791,830	29.13	25.63	+14
13	Pharmacology	12,554	165,626	13.19	11.80	+12
14	Neurosciences	29,233	600,867	20.55	19.07	+ 8
15	Immunology	10,580	246,416	23.29	21.50	+ 8
16	Clinical medicine	178,935	2,353,012	13.15	12.63	+ 4
17	Computer science	19,498	68,859	3.53	3.45	+ 2
18	Agricultural sciences	11,303	76,473	6.77	6.73	+ 1
19	Psychiatry/psychology	17,369	153,676	8.85	10.74	-18
20	Economics/business	7,835	32,535	4.15	5.72	-

The data above were extracted from the Essential Science Indicators database of Thomson Reuters. The database, currently covering the period January 1999 to December 2009, surveys only journal articles (original research reports and review articles) indexed by Thomson Reuters. Articles are assigned to a category based on the journals in which they were published and the journal-to-category field-definition scheme used by Thomson Reuters. Both articles tabulated and citation counts to those articles are for the period indicated.

Germany ranks third in output, third in number of citations received, and 11th in citations per paper (among nations publishing 50,000 or more papers during the period) across the science and social science fields surveyed in Essential Science Indicators. The table above ranks fields for Germany by relative citation impact – that is, citations per paper for Germany in a field compared with the global average citations-per-paper score in the same field. Germany’s percentage above or below the world average is presented in the column at the far right. Only in the fields of psychiatry/psychology and economics/business did Germany fail to achieve the world average in citation impact.

For more information on the Thomson Reuters Essential Science Indicators database, see: http://science.thomsonreuters.com/products/esi