GLOBAL RESEARCH TALENTS: ANALYSIS OF THEIR BEHAVIOUR AND PUBLICATION/CITATION PATTERNS

We examine publication/citation (P/C) patterns of 88,653 global most productive researchers (MPRs). We analyse the link between publication and citation activity and provide evidence regarding the extent to which top researchers scientific results are better than scientific results of others. Our second aim is to analyse the kinds of patterns that are occurring in P/C activities of top researchers. Major findings are that both quality and quantity parameters represent important feature of MPRs. The best among top researchers have substantially better parameters than those at the bottom level of ranking. We also find that many MPRs publish excellent publications and receive high number of citations. The best-cited publications have researchers exhibiting low number of total publications. Among factors contributing to success of MPRs are team, cooperation, specialization, Ph.D. supervising, international project participation, multiple use products and some other factors. Finally, looking at the patterns characterizing 22 research fields reveals differences. The clinical medicine field, e.g., is the area of research with the largest number of published WoS documents and citations. Multidisciplinary sciences show significantly lower values. The only similarity is an average number of citations per paper.