In a new analysis of the world's top universities, UC Santa Cruz ranked second in research influence as measured by the number of times its faculty's published work is cited by scholars around the world.
Published as part of the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2012-13, the analysis, conducted by Thomson Reuters, measured overall research influence based on the average number of citations per paper, using a database of more than 50 million citations to 6 million journal articles published over five years, from 2006 to 2010.
With a citation score of 99.9, UC Santa Cruz has the same score as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is surpassed only by Rice University, with a score of 100. Other institutions with high citation scores were Princeton University at 99.8 and the California Institute of Technology at 99.7. UCSC's score of 99.9 is unchanged from the previous year's rankings.
"I'm delighted but not surprised by this latest affirmation of the impact of UCSC faculty research," said Bruce Margon, vice chancellor for research. "Our campus is 'small' only in size, not in influence on world knowledge, and this type of analysis--how often UCSC discoveries are cited and used by others--is exactly the right way to judge the significance of our faculty's research. Our students benefit tremendously from being taught in an intimate setting by internationally recognized creators of knowledge."
In describing their methodology, THE editors called the evaluation of research influence their "flagship" indicator. As explained on the web site for the World University Rankings, "The citations help show us how much each university is contributing to the sum of human knowledge: they tell us whose research has stood out, has been picked up and built on by other scholars and, most importantly, has been shared around the global scholarly community to push further the boundaries of our collective understanding, irrespective of discipline."
UCSC's overall ranking in the THE World University Rankings for 2012-13 was 122nd. It is one of eight UC campuses among the top 200 universities worldwide.
In the overall rankings by subject, UC Santa Cruz was among the top 50 universities in the physical sciences (ranked 48th worldwide).