The University of Barcelona counts 157 researchers among the most influential in the world
A total of 157 research staff members at the University of Barcelona are among the top 2% of the world’s most influential scientists. They are among the most cited in their disciplines, according to the latest update of the database published by the Elsevier publishing group, known as the Stanford ranking. The UB is the Spanish university with the largest number of research staff in this group of leading scientists. The UB, with 174 researchers, is also the first in Spain in a ranking based exclusively on citations from the last year, in 2024, which aims to distinguish researchers who have achieved a high impact in their most recent publications. The list of UB researchers ranked in the Stanford ranking — both in the general ranking and in the list of researchers with the most recent impact — is available online.
A total of 157 research staff members at the University of Barcelona are among the top 2% of the world’s most influential scientists. They are among the most cited in their disciplines, according to the latest update of the database published by the Elsevier publishing group, known as the Stanford ranking. The UB is the Spanish university with the largest number of research staff in this group of leading scientists. The UB, with 174 researchers, is also the first in Spain in a ranking based exclusively on citations from the last year, in 2024, which aims to distinguish researchers who have achieved a high impact in their most recent publications. The list of UB researchers ranked in the Stanford ranking — both in the general ranking and in the list of researchers with the most recent impact — is available online.
Of the 230,333 scientists included in the database, 3,816 are affiliated with Spanish institutions, and of these, more than 53% are affiliated with public universities. Behind the UB are the Complutense University of Madrid (with 106 affiliated researchers), the University of Granada (100), the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Universitat de València (both with 90 researchers).
The Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) is the organization with the most prominent researchers (692), as it includes all the research centres it has across Spain. In the case of Catalonia, the total number of scientists is 947 (24.8% of the national total). The UB accounts for 34% of the researchers from Catalan universities that appear in the ranking.
Globally, the country with the most researchers is the United States. Next are the United Kingdom, China, and Germany. Spain ranks twelfth.
A total of 174 UB researchers among those who achieved the greatest impact in the last year
As for the list of researchers with the greatest impact in the last year, of the 236,313 included, 174 are affiliated with the UB, which is the leading university in Spain. It is followed by the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Granada (each with 125 researchers) and the Universitat de València (with 118 researchers).
The group of leading scientists established by this ranking covers more than 50 disciplines across different fields of knowledge: from life and health sciences to experimental sciences (such as physics and chemistry), engineering, social sciences (such as economics) and humanities (such as communication and philology).
The Stanford ranking, which is compiled from information provided by the Scopus database, measures the influence of research staff according to their output and impact in the fields of knowledge to which their publications are assigned. However, it should be noted that institutional affiliations are assigned based on the first address of the last article collected by the Scopus tool for the period studied, which may affect the results in the case of research staff with more than one affiliation or in the case of temporary mobility, which is common in research.