Study lists most influential scientists: 31 work at Fiocruz

The Journal Plos Biology has published the database of a study that analyzed the ranking of scientists worldwide. The ranking lists the 100 thousand most influential scientists in the world, according to databases used up to 2019. The survey was carried out by a team of the University of Standford (USA), led by Greek-American physician and scientist John Ioannidis, with several contributions in the field of medicine, especially in epidemiology and clinical medicine. The study works with two different rankings: one that analyzes the impact of researchers over their careers and another that evaluates the impact of their activities in 2019. Of the 100,000 scientists in the world, according to their careers, 600 are Brazilian, and 31 of them work for Fiocruz. The research, titled Updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators, can be read here.

The ranking, published on October 16^th, takes into account different metrics of productivity in research, citations, and others. The list also includes scientists who are not among those 100,000, but who stands out as the 2% best professionals in their specific research areas. Overall, 7 million careers were evaluated.

The survey used citations of the Scopus database, which updates scientists’ positions in two rankings: impact of researchers during their careers (Table S6-career-2019) and impact of researchers in a single year, in this case, 2019 (Table S7-singleyr-2019). The study and the tables are available here.

According to the survey, the citation metrics are widely used, albeit not always correctly. For this reason, Plos Biology has created a database available to the public, mentioning the world’s 100,000 main scientists, taking into account standardized information on citations, h index, adjusted co-authoring hm index, citations of articles in different positions of authorship, and a compound indicator. In this database, the separate data are displayed for impact over one’s career and in a single year. 

According to the study, “metrics are provided with and without self-citations and ratio of citations for mentioned papers. The scientists are classified in 22 scientific fields and 174 subfields. The specific percentiles of field and subfield are also provided for all scientists who have published at least five papers. The figures for overall careers are updated to the end of 2019”.

In addition, in the update, tables S6 and S7 also include scientists who are not among the 100,000 best according to the compound index but are among the 2% best scientists in their main subfield subject, among those who have at least five published papers. The researchers for Fiocruz, some of whom already deceased, included in the list of the world0s 100,000 best for their careers, are listed here, in alphabetical order (surnames):

Sônia Andrade
Zilton Andrade
Aldina Barral
Manoel Barral-Netto
Maurício Barreto
Zigman Brener
Constança Britto
Claudia Codeço
Rodrigo Correa-Oliveira
José Rodrigues Coura
Marcos Cueto
Filipe Dantas-Torres 
Solange de Castro
Marcos Vinícius N. de Souza
João Carlos Pinto Dias
Gerusa Dreyer
Ricardo Gazzinelli
Gabriel Grimaldi
Naftale Katz
Antoniana Krettli
Ricardo Lourenço de Oliveira
Hooman Momen
Edson Duarte Moreira
Carlos Morel
Wladimir Lobato Paraense
Alexandre Peixoto
Ana Rabello
Euzenir Nunes Sarno
Wilson Savino
Hermann Schatzmayr
Milena Botelho Pereira Soares
Célia Landmann