Student Life
UCSB Ranked Among Top in Science Watch Standings
The quality of UC Santa Barbara faculty’s scientific research has, for the first time, led the Institute for Scientific Information to place the campus among the most influential of the top 100 federally funded universities in the nation.
Between 1993 and 1997, UCSB ranked ninth of 11 institutions whose rate of cited papers caused the ISI’s performance guide, Science Watch, to crown them the “highest impact U.S. universities.” Under Science Watch’s evaluation system the campus was in the top-10 echelon in six fields, which tied it with Cornell, UCSD, and the University of Washington. Among those which placed higher for cumulative impact were Harvard, Stanford, Caltech, Yale, the University of Michigan, MIT, and UC Berkeley, respectively.
“These rankings are based on the citations-per-paper score for each university in 21 fields,” said Chancellor Henry Yang. “I am proud that the works of our colleagues at UCSB are ranked among the top 10 in six fields, including two first-place rankings. UCSB continues to shine. Our overall ranking has moved from number 12 four years ago to number nine among all universities, and is number four among public universities.”
| Rank | University | Standings |
| 1 | Harvard | 17 |
| 2 | Stanford | 13 |
| 3 | Caltech | 11 |
| 4 | Yale | 9 |
| 5 | U. of Michigan | 9 |
| 6 | MIT | 8 |
| 7 | UC Berkeley | 7 |
| 8 | U. of Washington | 6 |
| 9 | UC Santa Barbara | 6 |
| 10 | Cornell | 6 |
| 11 | UC San Diego | 6 |
Courtesy of Science Watch
Impact in each field was based on the number of times papers were cited during the five-year period. This number was compared to a “world baseline figure,” reported the newsletter. The result was a relative impact score, expressed as a percentage, that neutralized the advantage of quantity a larger department might have had over a smaller one. Each field required a minimum number of published papers.
In this way, UCSB’s 432 material science citations had a higher relative impact (237 percent) than MIT’s 755 (100 percent), which gave the campus one of its two first-place standings. The other field was physics where the department’s 2,526 citations rang up a 176 percent impact in comparison to Caltech’s 162 percent from 3,588 citations.
UCSB’s impact placed the campus third in chemistry, eighth in geosciences, ninth in plant and animal sciences, and tenth in engineering. All of these standings reflected a relative impact rate of 98 percent or better above the world average.
The threshold for papers eliminated some UCSB research fields from consideration, explained Science Watch Editor Chris King. Biology and biochemistry required a minimum of 500 papers over the five years; 232 papers were recorded. Likewise, the ecology and environment sector required 300 papers and UCSB contributed 156. The cited impact of those papers, however, was 80 percent, King said. That would have tied the ecologists for eighth-place ranking with Michigan State University.