Mary E. Brunkow was among the recipients of the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. She was honoured for discoveries that advanced our understanding of the immune system.
An October 2025 assessment by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library offered a striking observation. According to that assessment, Brunkow had never appeared on what is commonly known as the Stanford–Elsevier “World’s Top 2% Scientists” list. Her h-index was reported as 22.
Tu Youyou and William Campbell had also featured in a similar discussion. They received the Nobel Prize in 2015 for discoveries concerning the treatment of parasitic diseases. A 2016 study by Ioannidis and colleagues specifically examined their cases. The citation indicators used, based on 2013 data, had failed to place them among the highest-ranked researchers. That analysis was not the same as today’s top 2% list. Nevertheless, it offered a meaningful opportunity to question how a major scientific contribution translates into numerical indicators.
These examples do not diminish the achievements of researchers on the list. I warmly congratulate our scientists who have earned a place. I value the recognition their work has received within the international scientific community. It is entirely natural for their institutions and colleagues to share in that celebration. Scientific effort deserves recognition.
Yes, inclusion on the list is a highly valuable indicator of achievement. Absence from it, however, cannot be taken as proof of a lack of scientific merit. Preserving this distinction is our responsibility to researchers both on and outside the list.
We should acknowledge the substantial analytical effort behind the list. It combines several citation indicators using Scopus data. It takes co-authorship and author order into account. It provides calculations both including and excluding self-citations. It distinguishes career-long impact from citation impact in a single year. Together, these features offer more information than a simple comparison of publication counts.
Yet sophisticated calculations do not eliminate shortcomings in the underlying data. If a work is inadequately represented in the database, no formula can fully capture its influence. Comparisons between numbers may be consistent. Contributions that never become numbers may still remain outside the assessment.
This problem is particularly important in disciplines where books and monographs play a central role. History, philosophy and certain branches of the social sciences are examples. A historian’s years of archival research may become an essential reference work. A philosopher’s book may redirect debate within a field. Assessing such contributions through records dominated by journal articles can produce an incomplete picture.
It would be unfair to dismiss objections from these disciplines as envy of others’ success. Researchers often ask simply for their work to be assessed using appropriate criteria. We cannot ask someone working in a book-centred discipline why they do not follow the publishing practices of other fields. We must first explain how adequately our assessment captures their work.
Here, Elsevier and the research team behind the list have a clear responsibility. Classifying disciplines does not, on its own, resolve gaps in coverage. The extent to which books, publications in different languages and local sources are represented should be clearly explained. The effect of missing records on rankings should also be central to the discussion. This request does not undermine the value of the work. It is an expectation that would strengthen the credibility of an assessment used worldwide.
The fragmentation of a researcher’s publications across multiple profiles also matters. Incorrect attribution and incomplete records can alter a researcher’s apparent impact. Accessible correction mechanisms are essential in such cases. Responsibility for data accuracy cannot rest solely on researchers monitoring their own records.
Of course, I am not arguing that everyone currently outside the list should be included. Whether a researcher meets the threshold must be assessed using verified records. What I ask is that incomplete records should not be confused with apparently low impact. A discipline’s publishing practices should not be interpreted as evidence of its scientific inadequacy.
Our universities should exercise the same care in their announcements. Let us explain which work has distinguished an academic included on the list. Let us highlight the problem they solved, the method they developed and the researchers they trained. Let us give equal attention to academics who have written an important book or sustained a long-term research project. In this way, we can avoid tying achievement to a single annual round of announcements and a single ranking.
Brunkow’s example reminds us that recognising scientific endeavour sometimes requires other measures. We should keep this in mind as we celebrate the researchers who make the list. Honouring them and standing up for underrepresented disciplines are parts of the same academic responsibility. What we expect from those who compile the list is an assessment that captures this work more fully.
