By Mary Ann Albright
Gazette-Times reporter | Posted: Thursday, March 15, 2007 12:00 am
Thayne Dutson, dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences at Oregon State University, refers to the "excellence magnet" when describing the force that seems to draw good scientists together.
Perhaps due in part to this fortuitous snowballing effect, the college includes the most-often-cited researchers in the nation in the field of agricultural sciences. When it comes to geoscience, OSU scientists are the sixth most cited.
"We're very proud of our people, and it's wonderful when the people you have who do such hard work all the time get recognized," Dutson said.
The good news came in a recent issue of the Thomson Scientific publication Science Watch, which based its rankings on trends and performances of the top 100 federally-funded U.S. universities.
It reflects the number of times scientists cited research generated by people at a particular university in peer-reviewed journals. An impact score, calculated as citations-per-page during a four-year period, is reported for 21 fields of science.
OSU had the highest impact for agricultural sciences, followed by the University of Wisconsin, Cornell, Rutgers, University of California at Davis and Penn State. OSU was sixth in the study of geoscience, just behind Princeton University and ahead of such institutions as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.
The College of Agricultural Sciences includes about 118 faculty members conducting research, and has grown in prestige over the last 20 years, Dutson said.
This ratings coup comes on the heels of an earlier Thomson study that listed OSU's College of Agricultural Sciences as ninth worldwide in citation impact in agricultural sciences from January 1996 to February 2006.
Geoscience at OSU includes work in the department of geosciences in the College of Science, as well as the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, with more than 90 faculty members doing research in such fields as oceanography, atmospheric sciences, geology, volcanology and climate change.
As in the College of Agricultural Sciences, the field of geoscience is gaining momentum at OSU, said Roger Nielson, chairman of the department of geosciences.
"This is a tribute to the quality of the work being done by our faculty, graduate students, staff and others at OSU," said Nielson. "The important aspect of this rating is that it's a quality metric. It measures impact of the specific research, not just how many papers we publish."
OSU is working to determine what journals Thomson Scientific consulted when tabulating its rankings, Dutson said. Armed with this knowledge, OSU could then figure out more specifically which of its scientists and research projects are cited most.
There are some clues as to who and what might be driving the most recent honors, however.
As of May 2006, 13 OSU scientists were included on the ISI Web of Knowledge, an international index of scientific information that lists the top 250 scientists in the world in each of 21 subject areas. The distinction is based on whose work is cited most often in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
In the College of Agricultural Sciences, that included Dutson and Ronald Wrolstad, distinguished professor emeritus of food science and technology. In geoscience, OSU's most cited scientists included Robert Duncan, associate dean and director of student programs in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, and Bernd Simoneit, emeritus professor of chemical oceanography. Also cited in geoscience is Peter Clark, professor of geoscience and director of the geology program at OSU, Nielson said.
It's important to note the ranking is the result of many researchers' efforts, said Nicklas Pisias, professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences.
The Thomson Scientific ranking represents international peer recognition, and is especially impressive given the relatively small number of OSU faculty studying geoscience, he said.
Pisias' colleagues in the College of Agricultural Sciences are equally excited about the honor.
"We see it as a third-party assessment of the quality and the impact of the research being done by scientists in the College of Agricultural Sciences," said Bill Boggess, executive associate dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences. "We think it's a pretty big deal, like winning a national championship in the field against bigger and very prestigious universities."
Mary Ann Albright covers higher education. She can be reached at maryann.albright@lee.net or 758-9518.