Top universities and scholars in electrical/electronic engineering

Hong Kong has come out on top in the latest analysis of which universities and scholars have been producing the most highly cited research in different disciplines.

The analysis of research in electrical and electronic engineering shows that Hong Kong has three institutions in a list of 10 universities with the largest proportions of highly cited work.

Electrical and electronic engineering is by far the biggest area of engineering in terms of research volume, according to data from Elsevier’s Scopus database of indexed research.

Almost 760,000 pieces of research were published in this sub-discipline between 2014 and 2017, making up a quarter of all the publications in engineering.

Engineering research itself represents the second biggest slice of published scholarship worldwide after medicine. Around 12 per cent of all research indexed in Scopus from 2014 to 2017 was in this subject area, representing some 2.3 million publications.

Data on the institutions that have most regularly been publishing highly cited research in electrical and electronic engineering show that 26 per cent of City University of Hong Kong’s scholarship in the area was in the top 10 per cent of cited publications from 2014 to 2017.

The resulting “expected output index” of 2.6 for the institution puts it at the top of the list worldwide for the field, while the two other Hong Kong institutions in the top 10 are the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Other institutions to score well include ETH Zurich, the National University of Singapore, Aalborg University in Denmark and Imperial College London.

In terms of individual researchers, Peng Shi, professor of electrical engineering at Victoria University and the University of Adelaide, had the highest expected output index for publications in the top 1 per cent of cited articles. He was 33 times more likely than the world average to publish research in this bracket.

Top 10 scholars in electrical and electronic engineering research, 2014 to 2017, by expected output in top 1 per cent of world's most cited publications (world average =1) 

Source: Elsevier/SciVal. Only Peng Shi's output through Victoria was included as this had the highest EOI. 

According to one biography online, Professor Shi has published more than 600 journal papers and his work has received more than 20,000 citations.

He is followed in the list by Zidong Wang, professor of dynamical systems and computing at Brunel University London, who had an EOI for top 1 per cent publications of 29 between 2014 and 2017. Professor Wang has previously been named one of the world’s most prominent scientists in the area of big-data analysis.

Other researchers in the top 10 by EOI include academics based in China, the US and UK.

simon.baker@timeshighereducation.com