July 31, 2015
Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science is now ranked 10th in the world for quality scientific research according to the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands, known as CWTS.
This ranking puts Weizmann as the only scientific research institute outside the United States in the top 10.
From 2010-13, CWTS conducted a study of 750 scientific research institutions to examine the impact of publications on the scientific community. The outcome is the CWTS Leiden Ranking.
The ranking is based on numerical data and represents the number of scientific articles published and citations generated, with the number of citations a key indicator of research quality. The data was then compared to the size of the institute.
For Weizmann the study found its researchers had published 2,414 articles that were cited 27,859 times in other research and had 460 articles (19 per cent) among the top 10 per cent published in the world in terms of impact. Importantly, 57 articles made it to the top 1 per cent of articles considered to be most influential during the study period. Lastly the study reported that 1,561 (65 per cent) overall were in the top half of impactful articles published.
Weizmann noted that the results showed a considerable improvement on its former ranking of 19th ten years ago.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was the top research institution, followed by Harvard University.
