Highly Cited Researchers:
Key trends 2015-2025

Last year, the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) released an interactive visualization highlighting trends in the Highly Cited Researchers lists from 2014 to 2024. Following strong engagement from the academic community, we are pleased to share an updated version incorporating data from the 2015-2025 lists.

Over this period, there have been several milestones in the evolution of the Highly Cited Researchers methodology, including the most recent changes introduced in 2025. These developments provide important context for interpreting the trends shown in this dashboard (see timeline).

Key insights from a decade of data

Below are some headline findings from the Highly Cited Researchers 2015-2025 lists. Explore the visualizations to examine these trends in more detail.

• Figure 1: Number and share of Highly Cited Researcher awards by country/region and category
  The U.S. maintains a clear lead overall, but there are shifts in specific fields: in this dataset, Mainland China leads in Chemistry, Computer Science, Engineering, and Materials Science, compared with the 2014-2024 period where the U.S. led in all fields except Engineering and Materials Science.
• Figure 2: Number of Highly Cited Researcher awards and rank per year by country/region
  Between 2015 and 2025, Mainland China recorded a twelve-fold increase in Highly Cited Researcher awards. Hong Kong SAR followed with a seven-fold increase, while Singapore recorded a four-fold increase. Several countries/regions — including Israel, Austria, South Korea, Australia, Sweden, Belgium, Canada, and Norway — tripled their counts (excluding countries/regions with fewer than 20 Highly Cited Researchers in 2025).
• Figure 4: Number of Highly Cited Researcher awards per corresponding author by country/region and category
  Switzerland shows the strongest movement among countries/regions when considering awards relative to researcher population, rising from 8th to 5th position compared to the 2014-2024 analysis. Denmark entered the top 10, from 11th to 9th.