Based on their publications in highly ranked journals and the number of their citations, Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers List ranks researchers in 21 research areas who have had the most significant impact in their respective fields over the past decade. For each area, a calculation is made of how many Highly Cited Researchers are to be included on the list (based on the number of active researchers in that specific area) and how many most-cited articles are required for a researcher to be ranked as Highly Cited Researcher.

The four researchers from Lund University who have made it onto the list are Sara Linse and Johannes Rousk form the Faculty of Science and Oskar Hansson and Niklas Mattsson-Carlgren from the Faculty of Medicine.

Read more about the University’s most-cited researchers on lu.se (in Swedish)

About 50 researchers from Swedish higher education institutions are on the list. Among the other Swedish higher education institutions, Karolinska Institutet has the most researchers on the list. The 2021 Highly Cited list includes 12 researchers from KI, followed by the University of Gothenburg (9), Stockholm University (6) and Umeå University (5). From an international perspective, the Swedish universities are far below the top positions. With 214 most-cited researchers, Harvard University is the uncontested holder of first place on the list. The second place among the universities is occupied by Stanford University with 122 researchers.

The representation of researchers from Lund University has varied quite a lot over the years. For example, there were nine researchers with LU as their primary affiliation in the 2018 list, but the number fell to only two the following year (2019).

One context in which the number of most-cited researchers has a direct effect is ARWU, an international ranking of universities in which the indicator Highly Cited Researchers represents 20% of the total points for ranked universities.