"Awesomeness": More on SoA Faculty Citation Rankings!

Nov. 23, 2020

Thanks to Dr. Mark Nichter for pointing out in last week’s Anthro News Digest a new study of citation rankings that includes Anthropology. In fact, the School of Anthropology has quite a few people in the top 2%! Among our active faculty, professors Vance HollidayTakeshi InomataSteve Kuhn, and Mary Stiner are on this list. In addition to Dr. Nichter, retired professors C. Vance HaynesMichael Schiffer, and the late Jane Hill are still among the top 2% most cited authors in their fields. Seven of the eight on this list are actually in the 99th percentile (top 1% in their field)! As it happens, a woman leads the pack (Mary Stiner) with a whopping 99.86th percentile. Also worth noting are two medical anthropologists from other University of Arizona departments who are on this list: Cheryl Ritenbaugh (Professor Emerita and retired SoA affiliate faculty) and Anne Wright (Professor Emerita, Pediatrics).

Dr. Kuhn comments that "of course, these numbers are not everything. The metrics used in the study (see link below) are based on total citations, so of course they skew towards seniority. They also favor individuals and specialties that tend to publish peer-review articles, and multi-authored articles, rather than solo-authored books. Still, it is nice to see more recognition of the awesomeness of the SoA."

Citation: Ioannidis JPA, Boyack KW, Baas J (2020) Updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators. PLoS Biol 18(10): e3000918. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000918

Anthro News Digest date: 11/20/2020