Top institutions in Australia and New Zealand for research in environmental sciences and ecology

[First posted as a comment by Pascale Michel on September 26, 2011 at 2:18pm]

Ranking%20of%20Australian%20and%20NZ%20research%20organisations.pdf

Research in environmental sciences and ecology has emerged as a strongly improving area for Australia and New Zealand. Now, both nations not only hold a much larger world share of papers in this field than would be expected based on their output in all fields, but they have also seen the influence of such papers rise significantly: New Zealand scored 3 per cent above the world average in the field in terms of citations per paper in the period 1981-85 and 28 per cent above average in 2005-09, whereas, during the same interval, Australias citation impact increased from 10 per cent above the world average to 23 per cent above the world average. In particular, the rise in relative impact came largely during the past decade.

The data above, listing the top-ranked institutions in Australia and New Zealand in environmental sciences and ecology by citation impact, were extracted from the Essential Science Indicators database of Thomson Reuters. This database, currently covering the period January 2000 to December 2010, surveys only journal articles (original research reports and review articles) indexed by Thomson Reuters. Articles are assigned to a field based on the journals in which they were published and the Thomson Reuters journal-to-field classification scheme. Papers published in multidisciplinary journals such as Nature and Science are assigned to specific fields. Both articles tabulated and citation counts to those articles are for the period indicated.

Naturally, institutions publishing large numbers of papers have a greater likelihood of collecting more citations than those publishing fewer papers. This ranking is by citations per paper (impact) for institutions in Australia and New Zealand that published 250 or more papers in environmental sciences and ecology during the period. For papers with multiple institutional addresses, each institution receives full, not fractional, publication and citation credit.

Essential Science Indicators lists institutions ranked in the top 1 per cent for a field over a given period, based on total citations. For the current version, 585 institutions are listed in the field of environmental sciences and ecology, meaning that a total of 58,500 institutions were surveyed to obtain these results. Of the 585, a total of 390 institutions published 250 or more papers. Also appearing is the world rank by impact for each of these Australian and New Zealand institutions in environmental sciences and ecology. The average impact in the field for the period was 11.35, so those institutions ranked 21st and above achieved the world mark or better.

For more information on the Thomson Reuters Essential Science Indicators database, see: http://science.thomsonreuters.com/products/esi

Also read:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=416271