Top 10 researchers in chemistry based on total citations

	Scientist	Papers	Citations	Citations per paper
1	George M. Whitesides Harvard University, Cambridge, MA	245	17,077	69.70
2	Kris Matyjaszewski Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA	361	16,196	44.86
3	Chad A. Mirkin Northwestern University, Evanston, IL	188	14,584	77.57
4	Robert H. Grubbs California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA	168	14,367	85.52
5	J. Fraser Stoddart University of California, Los Angeles, CA	285	13,871	48.67
6	Omar M. Yaghi University of California, Los Angeles, CA	79	13,339	168.85
7	Anthony L. Spek Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands	577	13,101	22.71
8	G. Marius Clore NIDDK (Natl Inst of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases), NIH, Bethesda, MD	47	12,897	4.40
9	Stephen L. Buchwald Massachusetts Inst of Technology, Cambridge, MA	164	12,503	76.24
10	Charles M. Lieber Harvard University, Cambridge, MA	62	11,809	190.47

The data above were extracted from the Essential Science Indicators database of Thomson Reuters, currently covering the period 1 January 1998 through 30 June 2008. This database 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 Thomson Reuters’ journal-to-category field-definition scheme.

Both articles tabulated and citation counts to those articles are for the period indicated. Naturally, scientists publishing large numbers of papers have a greater likelihood of collecting more citations than scientists publishing fewer papers. This ranking in chemistry is by total citations, for those researchers who published at least 20 papers (two a year) over the past decade. For articles with multiple authors, each author receives full, not fractional, citation credit. Another ranking could be based on citations per paper, which reveals weighted impact. Essential Science Indicators lists authors ranked in the top 1 per cent for a field over a given period, based on total citations. For these data, 6,890 authors are listed in the field of chemistry, meaning that a total of approximately 689,000 authors’ records were reviewed to obtain these results.

For more information on Thomson Reuters’ Essential Science Indicators, see http://scientific.thomsonreuters.com/products/esi