Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Published by research database ScholarGPS, the ranking is based on classification of over million scholarly publications weighting each publication and citation by the number of authors, and excluding self-citations. We investigate the outcomes of both prior five-year β and lifetime rankings.
Results are informative in many aspects, including in comparison to other nations. The critical analysis of the results may inform policy efforts aimed at opening up a positive long-term economic development perspective for Italy.
The analysis may also inform research policy efforts in other countries aimed at connecting research with economic and societal development. Keywords: Excellence in research, Research excellence in Italy, Scholar rankings, Highly ranked scholars, Research policy.
Results and their critical analysis may inform policy efforts aimed at opening up a long-term economic development perspective for Italy. The analysis may inform research policy efforts in other countries aimed at connecting research with economic and societal development. The world's top scholars active, retired, and deceased in terms of productivity number of publications , quality number of citations , and impact of the most cited publications h-index were recently identified by a novel research database ScholarGPS.
Regardless of the relatively large number of publications and citations , Italy's scientific system suffers from poor meritocracy with recruitment, tenure and promotion being not linked to scientific merit [ [3] , [4] , [5] ]. For example, promotion to the rank of full professor in Italian universities does not correlate with scientific merit, but rather with the number of years that the candidate has belonged to the same university as the president of the selection committee, and to previous research collaboration with the committee's president [ 3 ].
