How often colleagues quote a scientific essay in their own publications is an important measurement to assess the importance of research. Since 2014, the "Web of Science Group" of the US company Clarivate Analytics has published a list of the world's most cited scientists in 21 different subject areas, which include all natural sciences, medicine as well as economics and social sciences.
David Jones, Andrey Korshunov and Stefan Pfister achieved their placement with interdisciplinary research (Cat. Cross Fields): The KiTZ scientists are among the world's most renowned experts in the molecular genetics of childhood brain tumors. This means that they have a significant influence on the medical care of young patients and therefore also publish in specialist journals for clinical medicine.
In 2019, 6,216 researchers worldwide were among the leading one percent of the most cited experts in their respective fields, including 347 from German institutions. In addition to David Jones, Andrey Korshunov and Stefan Pfister, eight other scientists from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) have made it to the “highly cited” category.
For the current list, Clarivate Analytics took into account the authors of all scientific publications that appeared between 2008 and 2018 and which were one of the most cited papers at the end of 2018 ("highly cited papers").
Depending on the size of the subject area, a different number of citations is required to count to the top percent. By far, most of the "most cited researchers" come from US institutions (2737), followed by China (636), the UK (516) and Germany (327).
