Top institutions in Mathematics

Data provided by Thomson Reuters from its Essential Science Indicators database, 1 January 2001-28 February 2011

Institution Papers Citations Highly cited % highly cited papers Citation impact

1 Johns Hopkins University 486 6,246 20 4.12 12.85

2 Stanford University 1,049 12,548 80 7.63 11.96

3 University of California, Berkeley 1,620 14,070 59 3.64 8.69

4 University of Minnesota 1,378 11,375 58 4.21 8.25

5 University of Washington 1,114 8,873 52 4.67 7.96

6 Harvard University 1,122 8,701 60 5.35 7.75

7 Princeton University 1,174 9,060 54 4.60 7.72

8 California Institute of Technology 657 5,056 29 4.41 7.70

9 Brown University 496 3,696 20 4.03 7.45

10 Duke University 492 3,623 31 6.30 7.36

11 University of California, Los Angeles 1,156 8,291 67 5.80 7.17

12 University of Pennsylvania 581 4,077 16 2.75 7.02

13 Imperial College London 777 5,369 20 2.57 6.91

14 University of Michigan 1,551 10,544 34 2.19 6.80

15 Chinese University of Hong Kong 800 5,253 16 2.00 6.57

16 ETH Zürich 734 4,751 22 3.00 6.47

17 Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton 523 3,267 12 2.29 6.25

18 Carnegie Mellon University 564 3,513 16 2.84 6.23

19 Northwestern University 535 3,311 9 1.68 6.19

20 New York University 875 5,367 21 2.40 6.13

21 Arizona State University 550 3,255 17 3.09 5.92

22 Columbia University 887 5,245 28 3.16 5.91

23 North Carolina State University 739 4,343 21 2.84 5.88

24 Cornell University 929 5,445 20 2.15 5.86

25 University of California, Davis 641 3,701 24 3.74 5.77

26 University of Chicago 952 5,451 28 2.94 5.73

University of Oxford 1,307 7,255 34 2.60 5.55

28 National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA) 643 3,497 18 2.80 5.44

%3D29 University of Texas at Austin 825 4,367 16 1.94 5.29

%3D29 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1,245 6,586 29 2.33 5.29

31 University of Maryland 815 4,159 12 1.47 5.10

32 University of Wisconsin 1,632 8,0 34 2.08 5.07

33 University of California, San Diego 719 3,632 15 2.09 5.05

34 Paris-Sud II University 1,442 7,263 17 1.18 5.04

35 National University of Singapore 1,086 5,448 23 2.12 5.02

36 Pennsylvania State University 1,253 6,4 30 2.39 5.01

37 University of British Columbia 959 4,706 19 1.98 4.91

38 Australian National University 704 3,434 14 1.99 4.88

39 University of Cambridge 791 3,842 16 2.02 4.86

40 Tel Aviv University 1,016 4,931 10 0.98 4.85

41 Purdue University 1,009 4,871 17 1.68 4.83

42 University of Toulouse 3 Paul Sabatier 1,098 5,252 18 1.64 4.78

43 University of Vienna 752 3,572 14 1.86 4.75

44 Georgia Institute of Technology 1,085 5,144 13 1.20 4.74

45 Texas A&M University 1,344 6,357 25 1.86 4.73

46 University of Missouri 964 4,519 16 1.66 4.69

47 University of Warwick 7 3,396 14 1.93 4.67

48 Catholic University of Leuven 820 3,801 12 1.46 4.64

49 University of North Carolina 1,111 5,123 20 1.80 4.61

50 Ohio State University 1,098 5,019 17 1.55 4.57

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).

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