UC academics recognised in Highly Cited Researchers list

University of Canterbury (UC) Emeritus Professors John Blunt and Murray Munro have been named among the top 1% of cited researchers worldwide.

Co-leaders of what was UC’s Marine Chemistry Group, Professors Blunt and Munro promoted the systematic exploration of New Zealand’s marine flora and fauna to identify species that elaborated compounds and have the potential to be developed as pharmaceutical agents.

Research activities of the group included the detection, isolation and structure determination of new antiviral or anticancer agents from bioactive New Zealand marine organisms, the isolation and cultivation of bioactive marine fungi and the synthesis of polymer therapeutics for use as targeted anticancer and anti-HIV drugs.

Professor Blunt, speaking also on behalf of Professor Munro described the recognition as a delightful surprise given the two had been Emeritus Professors for “a few years,”

“The publications that the analysis of citations were based on, were a series of annual reviews starting in 2002 in the field of marine natural products. These highly popular reviews were created in collaboration with colleagues at Auckland, Victoria and Waikato Universities, some of whom were former students at Canterbury,” he says.

The 2019 Highly Cited Researchers list identifies scientists and social scientists who produced multiple papers ranking in the top 1% by citations for their field and year of publication, demonstrating significant research influence among their peers.

The methodology that determines the who’s who of influential researchers draws on the data and analysis of bibliometric experts from the Institute for Scientific Information at the Web of Science Group.

The full 2019 Highly Cited Researchers list, executive summary and methodology can be found here>

Key findings for 2019 show:

• This year the list includes 6,217 Highly Cited Researchers in various fields from nearly 60 nations.

• A total of 3,517 researchers are celebrated for their performance in the 21 Essential Science Indicators (ESI) fields, and 2,492 for cross-field performance, for a total of 6,009 unique researchers, as some Highly Cited Researchers appear in more than one field. This is the second year that researchers with cross-field impact – those with exceptional broad performance based on high impact papers across several fields – have been identified.

• Of the researchers named as Highly Cited in the 21 ESI fields, 185, or 5%, appear in two ESI categories while 11 researchers showed exceptional broad performance by being named as Highly Cited in three categories. They are based all over the globe – in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

© Scoop Media