Six MSU entomologists listed as top 2% scientists

Six MSU entomologists were listed as the top 2% in the field, for entomologists worldwide. The top 2% was actually among all sciences, then I sorted the entomologists out. I extracted the data from the recent Elsevier web publication which included all sciences. Their database actually included all the cited people, including those passed away long ago. For example, the author of the bee anatomy bible, “Anatomy of the honey bee”, V.B. Wigglesworth, published between 1929 to 1992, was still ranked in the database.

Other prominent scientists were not listed here, merely because they were not classified as “entomologists” either because their department did not have that name, or they publish more on other disciplines (e.g. evolutionary ecology, chemical ecology etc). Notable missing big names include: Thomas Seeley, Lars Chittka and Martin Giurfa (I checked the original file, yes, indeed, they are all there in the top 2% of course. This further indicates the list is reliable).

The table below was truncated because the original table had more than 20 columns. np6022 was the total number of publications (1960 to 2022), and rank(ns) was their computed ranking (based on citation?) not including self-citation. This rank number was computed for all scientists first, then the top 2% was saved in the data file.

Data source: https://elsevier.digitalcommonsdata.com/datasets/btchxktzyw/6

The ranking above was based on the single year file (1st file). I am puzzled why the second, career-based one was very different. For example, some of my colleagues in the single year file are not listed in the career-one.  The web source does not really explain the differences between the two files. So I am guessing the single year is “more correct” :).

I managed to download the two rather large files (75 meg each), deleted everything but kept those with field as “Entomology” and sorted using “rank(ns)” which I assume it was the rank not including self citation, although again this was not explained.

Here are the two files which you can download. The table in this post was based on the single year data, whatever that means.

Single-Year-2022-ENT.xlsx
Career-2022-ENT.xlsx

The data was supposed to include citation statistics till end of 2022 (but strangely the table says lastyr=2023). Although in my case (#622), only 1 paper from 2019 was used and nothing after that. Apparently they use the data from Scopus, but that one I never updated after sometime in 2019. Or, more likely it was automatically updated but a glitch stopped it recently. Scopus listed two authors, one “Zhiyong Yong Huang” and one “Zachary Yong Huang”, but I have never published under the first one. I did publish initially as “Zhi-Yong Huang” then after that “Zachary Y. Huang”. Indeed, I was listed in 2019 and was ranked “110,255”, much higher than the current one (258,557) due to the missing data. This means next year I will back much higher :) :) .

There are so many databases now (Web of Sciences, ResearchID, ORCID, ResearchGate, etc) why do not they simply pull data from Web of Sciences? or even google scholar.

P.S., I also highlighted those I know have been working on honey bees or other bees, about 44 of them! If I missed one, I either did not look carefully enough, or do not know the person well enough to recognize the bee-name association. It is possible I might have missed a few.