Five University of Tartu researchers among the world's most influential scientists
The analytics company Clarivate revealed its 2024 list of Highly Cited Researchers, which includes five scientists from the University of Tartu. A total of six representatives of Estonian research institutions made it to the list of 6,886 influential researchers.
The Clarivate’s list of Highly Cited Researchers includes Professor of Microbiomics Elin Org, Professor in Mycorrhizal Studies Leho Tedersoo, Research Fellow at the Chair of Mychology Sten Anslan, Associate Professor in Molecular Ecology Mohammad Bahram and Visiting Professor of Human Geography Frank Witlox.
Professor of Microbiomics Elin Org works at the Institute of Genomics where her main research domain is the relationship between gut microbiota and complex diseases. Several of her papers have been published in the influential journal Nature Genetics. The research group led by her is working on the interactions between the microbiome and health. They aim to assess the role of the microbiome in the prevention or early detection of diseases, to find connections between the microbiome and different stages of disease, and to study the effect of the microbiome on drug efficacy.
Professor Leho Tedersoo , Research Fellow at the Chair of Mychology Sten Anslan and Associate Professor Mohammad Bahram work together on research in soil microbiology and biodiversity. Tedersoo focuses on fungi and aspects of global biogeography. Bahram, who is based at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, works on soil microorganisms and their functionality in a broader context. Their research aims to find out how to use soil resources sustainably in times of climate change, and to propose environmentally sound solutions for land-use change and biodiversity enhancement.
Frank Witlox, Visiting Professor of Human Geography at the University of Tartu, focuses in his research on the analysis of travel behaviour, sustainable mobility, urbanisation and urban logistics. Some of Witlox’s research has been published under other universities.
The list of most cited researchers also includes a University of Tartu alumnus – Imre Mäger, former research fellow at the Institute of Technology, who worked in biotechnology at the university until 2019 when he moved to Oxford University. He is currently Head of Research and Development at ExcepGen in San Francisco.
Research citability as an impact indicator
“The citability of a scientific article is an important indicator of the international impact of a researcher’s work. The more an article has been cited by other researchers, the broader the impact of the research on the advancement of new knowledge,” explained Kalmer Lauk, Analyst of Research and Development at the University of Tartu.
The list, which is based on one of the world’s largest scientific databases Web of Science, included 6,886 of the most influential scientists of the last 11 years (2013–2023). The list is based on data from the Web of Science’s analytics tool Essential Science Indicators (ESI), which aggregates 1% of the world’s most cited publications. ESI groups research publications into 21 fields of research.
However, the compilers of the list did not analyse all the scientific articles that reached the top most cited publications, but only those with authors representing no more than 30 institutions. “In addition, anomalies in self-referencing, plagiarism and general scientific ethics were checked. The checking process is long and thorough,” said Lauk.
On the basis of the cleansed data, a threshold is set by Clarivate for each field to determine how many researchers from that field are shortlisted, and the shortlisted researchers are then assessed based on the number of their most cited publications. All in all, it takes almost half a year to analyse the data.
Other Estonian researchers in the list are Professor and Academician Ülo Niinemets from the Chair of Plant and Crop Science at the Estonian University of Life Sciences and Adjunct Professor in Marketing Linda Hollebeek from Tallinn University of Technology.
