Top institutions in materials science

	Institution	Papers	Citations	Citations per paper
1	Rice University	381	11,949	31.36
2	Harvard University	596	16,467	.63
3	University of California, Santa Barbara	964	25,376	26.32
4	University of Washington	822	21,348	25.97
5	IBM Corporation	573	13,822	24.12
6	University of California, Berkeley	1,354	29,963	22.13
7	University of Southern California	552	11,548	20.92
8	Massachusetts Institute of Technology	1,654	34,017	20.57
9	University of Groningen	524	10,547	20.13
10	Princeton University	514	10,085	19.62
11	Stanford University	728	13,853	19.03
12	University of Minnesota	662	11,786	17.80
13	Max Planck Society	3,506	54,175	15.45
14	University of California, Los Angeles	749	11,003	14.69
15	Georgia Institute of Technology	1,581	21,609	13.67
16	Sandia National Lab	948	12,929	13.64
17	University of Michigan	1,312	17,454	13.30
18	University of Cambridge	2,066	,460	13.29
19	Northwestern University	1,418	18,598	13.12
20	Pierre and Marie Curie University (University of Paris 6)	1,071	13,721	12.81

The data above were extracted from the Essential Science Indicators database of Thomson Reuters. This database, currently covering the period 1 January 1999 to 31 October 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. Naturally, institutions publishing larger numbers of papers have a greater likelihood of collecting more citations than those publishing fewer papers.

This ranking is by citations per paper (impact) among those institutions that have collected 10,000 or more citations. This two-pronged analysis seeks to reveal the “heavy-hitters”; in doing so, it turns up some smaller producers with outsized influence.

For papers with multiple institutional addresses, each institution receives full, not fractional, 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, 631 institutions are listed in the field of materials science, meaning that a total of 63,100 institutions were surveyed to obtain the results. Of the 631, 71 institutions collected 10,000 or more citations.

US institutions dominate the ranking, taking 15 of the 20 spots. IBM Corporation is here considered as a global institution. The Netherlands, Germany, the UK and France, in that order, complete the list, with one institution from each country.

This ranking may be compared with a similar one of two years ago. New to the top 20 are Rice University, the University of Groningen, Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of California, Los Angeles and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dropping out of the list are the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Toronto, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, the Japan Science and Technology Agency and the University of Illinois.

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