Top 20 institutions in engineering based on impact

	Institution	Papers	Citations	Citations per paper
1	Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts	1,067	12,788	11.99
2	AT&T Various locations, US	1,239	13,089	10.56
3	California Institute of Technology Pasadena, California	1,944	19,470	10.02
4	Stanford University Stanford, California	3,428	32,291	9.42
5	University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, California	1,585	13,848	8.74
6	Princeton University Princeton, New Jersey	1,582	13,699	8.66
7	University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, California	2,487	21,466	8.63
8	Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts	4,539	37,448	8.25
9	IBM Corporation Various locations worldwide	2,120	17,435	8.22
10	University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, California	4,721	37,039	7.85
11	Cornell University Ithaca, New York	2,059	15,789	7.67
12	Northwestern University Evanston, Illinois	1,617	12,195	7.54
13	Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania	2,007	14,997	7.47
14	Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland	1,624	12,038	7.41
15	Max Planck Society Various locations, Germany	2,449	17,259	7.05
16	ETH Zurich Zurich, Switzerland	2,443	17,005	6.96
17	University of California, San Diego San Diego, California	2,500	17,375	6.95
18	Lawrence Livermore National Lab Livermore, California	1,854	12,677	6.84
19	University of Southern California Los Angeles, California	1,736	11,841	6.82
20	Technical University of Denmark Lyngby, Copenhagen, Denmark	1,662	11,257	6.77

US institutions dominate the top portion of this ranking, taking a total of 16 slots in the listing of 20. IBM Corporation is here considered a global organisation. Germany, Switzerland and Denmark complete the list, with one institution apiece represented. Of course, the Max Planck Society represents many locations. Among the 16 US institutions listed, half are located in California.

The data above were extracted from Thomson Scientific’s Essential Science Indicators database. This database, currently covering the period January 1997 to December 2007, surveys only journal articles (original research reports and review articles) indexed by Thomson Scientific. Articles are assigned to a category based on the journals in which they were published and Thomson Scientific’s journal-to-category field definition scheme. Both articles tabulated and citation counts to those articles are for the period indicated. Naturally, institutions publishing large numbers of papers have a greater likelihood of collecting more citations than scientists publishing fewer papers. This ranking is by citations per paper (impact), among those institutions that have collected 10,000 or more citations in engineering journals. For papers with multiple institutional addresses, each institution receives full, not fractional, citation credit. Essential Science Indicators lists institutions ranked in the top 1 per cent for a field over a given period, based on total citations. For the current version, 995 institutions are listed in the field of engineering, meaning that 99,500 institutions were reviewed to obtain these results. Of the 995, 80 institutions collected 10,000 or more citations in engineering. For more information on Thomson Scientific’s Essential Science Indicators, see http://scientific.thomson.com/products/esi. Also see: http://scientific.thomson.com.

Next week: top journals in molecular biology and genetics