CEHS researchers among most cited scientists worldwide

04 May 2021    

from CEHS News:

Twelve researchers from the College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln were listed among the top 2% of the most cited researchers worldwide throughout their careers, according to research on metascience by Stanford University. 

Janos Zempleni is second in career-long impact from CEHS.

Stanford University professor John Loannidis worked alongside U.S.-based Kevin Boyack and the Netherlands-based Jeroen Baas to release the exhaustive list of the top 100,000 scientists of various disciplines. The database, which analyzed the career-long impacts by researchers, was published publicly in mid-October 2020 in the journal PLoS Biology.

Each scientist was assigned a weight based on the number of citations of their own research publications. Separate data are shown for career-long and single year impact. CEHS researchers, in rank-order of impact are listed below:

Career-long impact:

• Yiqi Yang, Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design
• Janos Zempleni, Nutrition and Health Sciences
• Ken Kiewra, Educational Psychology
• Sue Sheridan, Educational Psychology and Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools
• Bob Reid (emeriti), Special Education and Communication Disorders
• Ron Nelson, Special Education and Communication Disorders
• Mike Epstein (emeriti), Special Education and Communication Disorders
• Sue Swearer, Educational Psychology
• Terry Gutkin (emeriti), Educational Psychology
• John Maag, Special Education and Communication Disorders

Single-year impact:

• Katie Edwards, Educational Psychology
• Rich Torraco (emeriti), Educational Administration
• Janos Zempleni, Nutrition and Health Sciences
• Sue Swearer, Educational Psychology
• Sue Sheridan, Educational Psychology and Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools

The authors noted that just counting the number of citations does not truly measure the impact of the researcher, since some fields are more vibrant with research than others. However, they argue that their database, “allows the inclusion of more comprehensive samples of top-cited scientists for fields that have low citation densities and therefore would be less likely to be found in the top 100,000 when all scientific fields are examined together.” 

They assigned scientists ranks based on their impacts within the sub-fields of their disciplines. See the full study.