Top 30 Research Institutions in Oceanography

Published on

May 5, 2011

Last updated

May 22, 2015

The table above features the top 30 universities and other research organisations in the field of oceanography based on citations to highly cited papers published since 2000. Highly cited papers are defined in the Thomson Reuters Essential Science Indicators database, from which these statistics derive, as ranking in the top 1 per cent by citations for their field and year of publication. Some 387 oceanography papers were identified as such during the period measured and were cited 35,539 times, an average of 91.83. Thus, the top 18 insti?tutions not only excelled in citation impact but also surpassed the average score for such influential reports.

In terms of the number of highly cited papers and total citations, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute comes first. Ken Buesseler, senior scientist at the institution, whose speciality is marine geochemistry, is the researcher with the greatest number of highly cited papers (10), as well as total citations to those papers (1,558). He is currently monitoring the release of radioactivity from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan.

The nations represented by the 30 institutions include, in rank order: US (17); Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the UK (two each); and Belgium, Japan and Spain (one each).

Oceanography as defined here encompasses many specific disciplines and their journals, including marine biology, limnology, fisheries science, ecology and geophysics. Papers published in multidisciplinary journals such as Science and Nature relating to the discipline were also included in this analysis.

For more information, see:

Top 30 Research Institutions in Oceanography
*Data provided by Thomson Reuters from its Essential Science Indicators, January 2000-December 2010*
?	Organisation and nation	Highly cited papers	Citations	Citations per paper
1	University of Otago, New Zealand	11	1,628	148.00
2	Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US	12	1,729	144.08
3	National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US	23	3,092	134.43
4	Rutgers State University, US	10	1,268	126.80
5	University of Washington, US	21	2,662	126.76
6	University of East Anglia, UK	11	1,367	124.
7	National Center for Atmospheric Research, US	10	1,147	114.70
8	Plymouth Marine Laboratory, UK	15	1,699	113.
9	Princeton University, US	10	1,097	109.70
10	University of Southern California, US	10	1,073	107.30
11	University of California, Santa Barbara, US	18	1,895	105.28
12	University of Tokyo, Japan	10	1,018	101.80
13	National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, New Zealand	16	1,604	100.25
14	University of Hawaii, US	20	1,991	99.55
15	Nasa, US	11	1,086	98.73
16	Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Germany	18	1,757	97.61
17	Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, US	43	4,179	97.19
18	University of California, Santa Cruz, US	11	1,053	95.73
19	Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia	21	2,003	95.38
20	University of Tasmania, Australia	12	1,077	89.75
21	University of California, San Diego, US	23	2,020	87.83
22	Oregon State University, US	12	1,009	84.08
23	University of Miami, US	20	1,5	76.35
24	Texas A&M University, US	10	751	75.10
25	Virginia Institute of Marine Science, US	19	1,301	68.47
26	Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Canada	10	638	63.80
	Dalhousie University, Canada	11	563	51.18
28	CSIC, Spain	16	667	41.69
29	Ghent University, Belgium	10	384	38.40
30	Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences(IFM-GEOMAR), Germany	10	244	24.40

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