Imperial researcher listed among top five most-cited scientists in the world

Professor Peter Barnes ranks 4th in global list of researchers

Imperial’s Professor Peter Barnes has been listed as one of the world’s most highly cited scientists in a list of 100,000 scientists across 22 fields.

The work, led by Stanford University in California, analysed citation metrics from across 22 scientific fields – from chemistry and clinical medicine to physics and astronomy. More than 500 Imperial College London researchers are included in the list.

Professor Barnes, from the National Heart & Lung Institute at Imperial College London, was ranked fourth in the world overall and first in medical research. His research focuses on COPD, a group of progressive inflammatory conditions that includes emphysema and chronic obstructive bronchitis.

In the UK, COPD affects around one in ten adults over the age of 40 and it kills more women than breast cancer. It causes the airways to become narrowed, leading to shortness of breath, and the condition is hard to treat so it usually becomes progressively worse. In the developed world, most people contract COPD through smoking.

Professor Barnes said: “I was very surprised to see that I was ranked first amongst medical researchers in the world and amongst all researchers in the UK as my specialty, respiratory medicine, receives rather little publicity. This high ranking is a tribute to all of the outstanding researchers I have worked with over many years.”

The top 20 Imperial researchers based on the study criteria are below. Read the full rankings online.

Imperial College London is committed to the fair assessment of research achievements as a signatory of The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).

Imperial no longer considers journal-based metrics, such as journal impact factors, in decisions on the hiring and promotion of academic staff.