World Top 100 Scientists 2021
The ranking of “Top 100” scientists is based on total h-index scores. Top 100
scientists can be ranked globally or specific to the following regions including Africa,
Asia, Europe, North America, South America, Oceania, Arab League, EECA, BRICS,
Latin America, and COMESA based on total h-index scores without any breakdown by
subject areas. Top 100 rankings in the world, in a continent, or a region include
standardized subjects areas of Agriculture & Forestry, Arts, Design and Architecture,
Business & Management, Economics & Econometrics, Education, Engineering &
Technology, History, Philosophy, Theology, Law/Law and Legal Studies, Medical and
Health Sciences, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences. Subjects indicated as
“others” will not be included in the ranking by regions and
subjects. Therefore, you may wish to specify your subject and branch and
contribute in order to standardize your performance. Determining the
subjects/departments, to which scientific fields would belong, may seem easy in
some branches and in a variety of countries. However, it may create considerable
confusion in some other countries, regions, and schools. We would like to emphasize
that the following fields including Engineering, Natural and Environmental Sciences,
Biology, Biochemistry, Material Science, Biotechnology, Chemistry, and Social
Sciences may exist in quite variable spectrums in different countries. Therefore, we
would like to stress that the standardization of subjects and branches has not been
easy. To perform standardizations, we accepted the official names of the institutions
and academic branches as accurate in the way that they were specified on the
university website. We have developed this strategy in order to standardize this
complex situation at least partially. Furthermore, we started a procedure to add an
asterisk as “*” at the end of the names of the authors when a scientific paper of
interest included many authors such as CERN’s scientific papers.
Limitations of the “AD Scientific Index”: Missing or Inaccurate Profiles
or Missing Institution Names
This index is a comparative platform developed by ranking accessible and
verified profiles. First and foremost, not being included in this index for various
reasons does not indicate that the academician is not prized or it does not mean that
only those academicians listed in the index are the prized ones. This needs to be
carefully noted. A meritorious scientist may not have been included in this index
because of not having a Google Scholar profile or our lack of access to that profile for
various reasons. The unavailability of verified Google Scholar profiles of scientists,
who work in well-known and respected academic institutions in respective countries,
may prevent us from finding institutions and scientist profiles. Because updating the
profiles in the system and collection of data from open sources require efforts and
because the data have been collected for the first time, it is not possible for the
index to be completely free of errors. Accurate and instant updating of profiles and
institution names requires an endless workload that no institution can overcome only
with available resources despite all endeavors.
A high h-index (WOS, Scopus, Publon, etc.) does not mean that a profile will
be automatically created for the academician in Google Scholar. Indeed, Google
Scholar profiles are created and made public by scientists themselves on a voluntary
basis. An individual may not have created a profile for various reasons and,
therefore, will not be listed in the "AD Scientific Index". Furthermore, a profile can be
rejected or may not be listed at a particular time. It needs to be considered that, at
the time of our search, a profile may not exist or may not be public, some profiles
may be public only at particular times, the information in the profile may not be
standard, there may be more than one profile belonging to the same person, the
profiles may not be verified, the name of the institution can be missing, surnames or
institution names can change, profile owners may have died, or known or unforeseen
problems may happen. However, missing information is completed in the system
regularly and the list is updated and corrected continuously. Profiles; whose owners
have passed away, are removed from the system.
When we detect or be informed of unethical situations in profile information
that go beyond the limits of goodwill, the person is excluded from the list. You can
report problematic and misleading profiles on our “Rejection List” page. As
individuals are responsible for the accuracy of their profiles, organizations, too,
should include the need for reviewing academic staff profiles in the agenda.
Articles with thousands of authors such as CERN studies in the field of physics
or scientific studies with more than one author in classification studies in medicine or
statistical studies raise debates about the requirements for the amount of the article
content belonging to one author. Because such papers may cause inequality of
opportunity, a separate grouping system may be needed in the future.
Pros and cons of "ranking" systems including Web of Science, Scopus, Google
Scholar, and similar others are well known and the limits of use of such systems
have long been recognized in the scientific community. Therefore, interpreting this
study beyond these limits may lead to incorrect results. The “AD Scientific Index”
needs to be evaluated considering all of the abovementioned potential limitations.
Comparisons of Ranking Systems
In addition to ranking lists of scientists, consisting of many tables and charts
of trends analyses to be delivered for the first time, this comprehensive system
offers several data and analysis results that will importantly provide an added value
to branches and institutions within the limits of inherent advantages and limitations.
We would like to kindly emphasize that comparisons should not be performed
between two branches, either of which having different potentials to produce
scientific papers. For example, it is not correct to expect the same number of articles
from completely different branches such as law, social sciences, music, physics, or
biochemistry. Ranking comparisons should not overlook the inherent potentials of
branches to produce publications. For this reason, we try to primarily involve
observations within the same subject/department and recent productivity.
Through the contribution of many scientists from different fields, the "AD
Scientific Index" undergoes systematic updates with the aim of continuous
improvement. The index is an independent institution and does not receive any
support from any institutions, organizations, countries, or funds. Concurrently with
the continuous increase in the number of universities and scientists registered to the
Index, we are improving methodology, software, data accuracy, and data cleaning
procedures every day through the contributions of a large team. Your remarks and
contributions about our shortcomings will shed light to lead our efforts for continuous
improvement.
Could this work have been designed in another way?
It is not possible to exactly measure the research capacity of a university or
scientist by using a few parameters. Assessments should include many other types of
data such as patents, research funds, incentives, published books, tutoring intensity,
congress presentations, and graduate and doctoral teaching positions. As a
frequently voiced criticism, we have been asked why the Web of Science h-index is
not used. Since it is not possible to have access to the entire data covering all
academic components such as the h-indexes of the Web of Science, Scopus, or
Publons, etc., or the organizations, patents, awards, etc. Therefore, only available
qualified data have been included.
