Field rankings for Scotland

	Field	Papers	Citations	Citations per paper	World average	% +/–
1	Agricultural sciences	1,738	18,806	10.82	5.94	+82.2
2	Pharmacology and		toxicology	1,477	,718	18.77
3	Space sciences	2,219	48,429	21.82	12.75	+71.1
4	Plant and animal sciences	9,677	98,293	10.16	6.70	+51.6
5	Physics	7,422	85,711	11.55	7.86	+46.9
6	Environment/ecology	4,075	54,859	13.46	9.32	+44.4
7	Clinical medicine	22,466	363,617	16.19	11.44	+41.5
8	Materials science	1,719	13,384	7.79	5.56	+40.1
9	Mathematics	2,012	8,057	4.00	2.90	+37.9
10	Biology and biochemistry	7,150	149,651	20.93	15.49	+35.1
11	Molecular biology	4,494	139,332	31.00	23.58	+31.5
12	Microbiology	3,033	53,466	17.63	14.19	+24.2
13	Computer sciences	2,154	7,512	3.49	3.01	+15.9
14	Geosciences	3,743	35,162	9.39	8.23	+14.1
15	Engineering	5,900	24,977	4.23	3.80	+11.3
16	Neuroscience/behaviour	3,054	58,246	19.07	17.22	+10.7
17	Social sciences	5,467	23,770	4.35	3.96	+9.8
18	Psychiatry/psychology	2,758	28,574	10.36	9.46	+9.5
19	Chemistry	7,786	79,123	10.16	9.37	+8.4
20	Immunology	1,560	31,650	20.29	19.67	+3.2
21	Economics and business	1,795	8,448	4.71	4.88	–3.5

The data above were extracted from the Essential Science Indicators database of Thomson Reuters. The database, currently covering the period January 1999 to February 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 Thomson Reuters’ journal-to-category field-definition scheme. Both articles tabulated and citation counts to those articles are for the period indicated.

Scotland ranks 23rd in output, 15th in citations received and fifth in citations per paper (following Switzerland, the US, Denmark and the Netherlands, respectively) across the science and social science fields surveyed in Essential Science Indicators. The table above ranks fields for Scotland by relative citation impact – that is, citations per paper for Scotland in a field compared with the world’s average citations per paper score in the same field. Scotland’s percentage above or below the world average is presented in the column at the far right. Only in economics and business did Scotland’s performance, by this measure, fall below the world average. Outstanding areas for Scotland include agricultural sciences, pharmacology and toxicology, space sciences and plant and animal sciences – all more than 50 per cent above the world average in terms of relative citation impact. For more information on Thomson Reuters’ Essential Science Indicators database, see: http://in-cites.com/rsg/esi/