Measuring the Impact of CIC Scholarship

The Center for Library Initiatives has partnered with Thomson Reuters to measure the impact of research from CIC universities using the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) tool. ESI includes scholarship in 22 disciplines and covers research worldwide.

The CIC produces 25% of PhDs in agriculture each year and 14.5% of all PhDs granted annually in the U.S. During 2002-2006, the CIC made up 5% of the worldwide papers published in the field of Agricultural Science, and 19% of U.S. papers in Agricultural Science had at least one CIC member author.

Highly cited papers are the papers cited most frequently for a research area over a period of time -- the top 1% of total papers indexed. During the 10-year period 1998-2007 there were a total of 84,811 highly cited papers in ESI. Of those, 8,234 -- or 9.71% -- were authored by CIC member scientists.

ESI also measures the emergence of important new research through Hot Papers. Hot Papers focuses on very recent papers that show an unusual rate of citation over a two-year period. The CIC institutions contributed 12% of Hot Papers from 2006-2008.

Fifty years after the Committee on Institutional Cooperation was formed, the faculty and researchers at member universities are leaders in generating high-impact, global research.