Top institutions in Mathematics

June 2, 2011

The 50 universities and research institutes listed above were among the world's most influential in the field of mathematics - whether by total citations received or by citations per paper - for papers published during the period 1 January 2001 to 28 February 2011. This table ranks the institutions by citation impact, or citations per paper. The number of highly cited papers in the field for each institution is also listed, as well as the percentage of highly cited papers in terms of total output for each. Highly cited papers are defined as papers that rank in the top 1 per cent by citations for their field and year of publication.

In the current edition of Essential Science Indicators, 200 institutions are listed in the field of mathematics, which is defined by a set of journals devoted to pure mathematics, applied mathematics, statistics and probability. Since Essential Science Indicators presents only the top 1 per cent of institutions in a field in terms of total citations earned, this means some 20,000 institutions were surveyed to obtain these results. Of the 200 institutions, 78 received 3,000 or more citations during the period, so all those listed above rank in the top one-half of 1 per cent by citations. The average citation impact in mathematics during the 10-year and two-month period surveyed here was 3.26.

Among the institutions listed in the table, the top three by number of papers published are the University of Wisconsin (1,632), the University of California, Berkeley (1,620) and the University of Michigan (1,551). The three with the highest number of citations are the University of California, Berkeley (14,070), Stanford University (12,548) and the University of Minnesota (11,375). The top three institutions in terms of their percentage of highly cited papers published are Stanford University (7.63 per cent), Duke University (6.3 per cent) and the University of California, Los Angeles (5.8 per cent). By definition, one would expect only 1 per cent of an institution's papers to be highly cited, so these three exceeded expectations by roughly six to eight times.

Finally, as the table shows, top honours in citation impact go to Johns Hopkins University, despite its relatively small output.

The nations represented by the institutions in the group of 50 are: the US (35 institutions), the UK (four), France (three), and Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Israel, Singapore and Switzerland (one each).

Mark Newman of the University of Michigan fielded the most-cited paper in mathematics during the period: M.E.J. Newman, "The structure and function of complex networks", SIAM Review, 45 (2): 167-256, June 2003. This paper, in an area of growing interest, has received 3,064 citations to date. That is 557 times more than the average number of citations for a mathematics paper published in 2003, which is 5.50. On this subject, see M.E.J. Newman's Networks: An Introduction (2010).

For more information, see http://science.thomsonreuters.com/products/esi

Top institutions in Mathematics
Data provided by Thomson Reuters from its Essential Science Indicators database, 1 January 2001-28 February 2011
 InstitutionPapersCitationsHighly cited% highly cited papersCitation impact
1Johns Hopkins University4866,246204.1212.85
2Stanford University1,04912,548807.6311.96
3University of California, Berkeley1,62014,070593.648.69
4University of Minnesota1,37811,375584.218.25
5University of Washington1,1148,873524.677.96
6Harvard University1,1228,701605.357.75
7Princeton University1,1749,060544.607.72
8California Institute of Technology6575,056294.417.70
9Brown University4963,696204.037.45
10Duke University4923,623316.307.36
11University of California, Los Angeles1,1568,291675.807.17
12University of Pennsylvania5814,077162.757.02
13Imperial College London7775,369202.576.91
14University of Michigan1,55110,544342.196.80
15Chinese University of Hong Kong8005,253162.006.57
16ETH Zürich7344,751223.006.47
17Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton5233,267122.296.25
18Carnegie Mellon University5643,513162.846.23
19Northwestern University5353,31191.686.19
20New York University8755,367212.406.13
21Arizona State University5503,255173.095.92
22Columbia University8875,245283.165.91
23North Carolina State University7394,343212.845.88
24Cornell University9295,445202.155.86
25University of California, Davis6413,701243.745.77
26University of Chicago9525,451282.945.73
University of Oxford1,3077,255342.605.55
28National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA)6433,497182.805.44
%3D29University of Texas at Austin8254,367161.945.29
%3D29Massachusetts Institute of Technology1,2456,586292.335.29
31University of Maryland8154,159121.475.10
32University of Wisconsin1,6328,0342.085.07
33University of California, San Diego7193,632152.095.05
34Paris-Sud II University1,4427,263171.185.04
35National University of Singapore1,0865,448232.125.02
36Pennsylvania State University1,2536,4302.395.01
37University of British Columbia9594,706191.984.91
38Australian National University7043,434141.994.88
39University of Cambridge7913,842162.024.86
40Tel Aviv University1,0164,931100.984.85
41Purdue University1,0094,871171.684.83
42University of Toulouse 3 Paul Sabatier1,0985,252181.644.78
43University of Vienna7523,572141.864.75
44Georgia Institute of Technology1,0855,144131.204.74
45Texas A&M University1,3446,357251.864.73
46University of Missouri9644,519161.664.69
47University of Warwick73,396141.934.67
48Catholic University of Leuven8203,801121.464.64
49University of North Carolina1,1115,123201.804.61
50Ohio State University1,0985,019171.554.57

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