The data above were extracted from the Essential Science Indicators database of Thomson Reuters. This database, currently covering the period January 2000 through December 2010, surveys only journal articles (restricted to research reports and review articles) indexed by Thomson Reuters. Articles are assigned to a field based on the journals in which they were published and the Thomson Reuters journal-to-field classification scheme. Papers in multidisciplinary journals such as Nature and Science are assigned to specific fields on an article-by-article basis. Both articles tabulated and citation counts to those articles are for the period indicated. Naturally, institutions publishing many papers have a greater likelihood of collecting more citations than those publishing fewer papers. This ranking is by citations per paper (citation impact) for institutions that published 500 or more papers in the field of immunology during the period. For papers with multiple institutional addresses, each institution receives full, not fractional, publication and citation credit.

Essential Science Indicators lists institutions ranked in the top 1% for a field over a given period, based on total citations. For the current version, 318 institutions are listed in the field of immunology, meaning that a total of approximately 31,800 institutions were surveyed to obtain these results. Of the 318, 88 institutions published 500 or more papers. The ranking by citation impact seeks to reveal “heavy-hitters” based on per paper influence, not mere output or total citations. The average impact in immunology for the period was 21.81. Thus, all listed above performed well above the world average.

The United States is dominant in the ranking, represented by 26 of the 30 institutions listed. The United Kingdom is represented by Oxford University, at 12th. Japanese institutions appear three times (Osaka University, at 1st, Kyoto University, at 3rd, and the University of Tokyo, at 28th). Japan’s high ranking can be attributed to the research groups of Shizuo Akira at Osaka University and of Shimon Sakaguchi at Kyoto University. Of the 61 highly cited papers in immunology from Osaka University over the period 2000-2010, 56 are by Akira, and of the 27 highly cited papers in immunology from Kyoto University during the same period, 10 are by Sakaguchi. Highly cited papers are defined as those that rank in the top 1% by citations for their field and year of publication. Akira’s area of specialization is innate immunity and Sakaguchi’s focus is regulatory T-cells.

See Essential Science IndicatorsSM from Thomson Reuters for more information.

This item also appeared in the Times Higher Education magazine.