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Scientific Output of AIMS Research Centres

Scientific Output of AIMS Research Centres

The number of publications from AIMS Research Centres is rising strongly, in correspondence to the overall growth AIMS has experienced in recent years.

AIMS publications per year (non-cumulative)

The figure below illustrates this growth from 2010 until 2014. During this period the output has grown by an average factor of 1.8 per year. Between 20% to 30% of the scientific output is from visiting researchers.

Top 10 researchers that have worked at AIMS

The number of publications, citations and h-index are based upon their total research output during their career.

NameNationalityPositionNumber of publicationsNumber of citationsh-index
Romeel Davé*AmericanResearch Chair143791148
Bruce Bassett*South AfricanSenior Resident Researcher98844639
Martin Kunz*Swiss/GermanVisiting Professor149335232
Roberto TrottaItalianResearch Fellow72212728
Douw G. SteynSouth AfricanSenior Visiting Researcher88185326
Delfim F.M. TorresPortugueseResearcher171204424
Source: Technopolis 2015, Scopus

Citations

As the output of papers by AIMS has been rising, so has the cumulative number of citations AIMS’ papers have received (1624 on 30 June 2015). The indicator of interest though is the average number of citations per paper, which is 7 citations per paper. Another key indicator is the h-index, which is 19. This indicates that AIMS researchers have pub- lished 19 documents that have been cited at least 19 times.

Key citation figures

Number of citationsCitations per paperPercentage with no citationsPercentage with no citations until 33%h-index
1624750%33%19
Source: Technopolis 2015, Scopus

Top 5 cited papers

AIMS researcherPaper#
M. KunzAde, P. A. R., Aghanim, N., Armitage-Caplan, C., Arnaud, M., Ashdown,
M., Atrio- Barandela, F., … & Davies, R. D. (2014).
Planck 2013 results. XVI.
Cosmological parameters. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 571, A16.
304
P.G FerreiraSkordis, C., Mota, D. F., Ferreira, P. G., & Boehm, C. (2006).
Large scale structure in Bekenstein’s theory of relativistic modified Newtonian dynamics.
Physical Review Letters, 96(1), 011301.
113
K. MoodleyDunkley, J., Bucher, M., Ferreira, P. G., Moodley, K., & Skordis, C. (2005).
Fast and reliable Markov chain Monte Carlo technique for cosmological parameter estimation.
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 356(3), 925-936.
105

Journals

The Source Normalised Impact per Paper (SNIP) is a comparative indicator of the impact of journals. SNIP is the ratio of a source’s average citation count per paper and the citation potential of its subject field. A SNIP value that is higher than one means that the journal has an above average SNIP for its field. A SNIP that is lower than one means that the journal has a below average SNIP for its field. If SNIP is equal to 1, the journal is absolutely average for its field.

Impact factors for the top 5 journals with most AIMS publications

JournalNumber of publicationSNIP 2004-2014SNIP 2014
Astronomy and Astrophysics Astrophysical Journal
Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Physical Review D – Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
171.531.19

Network Analysis

A network analysis maps the countries and institutions the AIMS researchers co-publish its papers with. The figure shows that they work mostly with institutes in South Africa, US, Canada and Europe. In Europe they mostly co-pub- lish with researchers from the UK, Switzerland, Spain, Germany and Italy

Source: Technopolis 2015, Scopus

Top 10 institutes in terms of co-publications

InstituteNumber of co-publicationsCountry
Université de Genève70Switzerland
Niels Bohr Institute5Denmark
University of California, Santa Barbara52United States
University of Cambridge52United Kingdom
Princeton University51United States
Imperial College London51United Kingdom
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory49United States
Helsingin Yliopisto48Finland
CEA Saclay48France
CNRS Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique47France
Source: Techopolis, 2015, Scopus

In addition to the above top 10 institutes AIMS co-publishes with, AIMS works together with many African institutes as well. The figure below shows the top 5 African institutes in terms of co-publications, which are all South African institutes. The only other African institute that is not in South Africa that AIMS co-published with frequently (17 papers) is Université de Yaounde I in Cameroon

InstituteNumber of co-publicationsCountry
University of KwaZulu-Natal41South Africa
University of Cape Town33South Africa
Universiteit Stellenbosch32South Africa
South African Astronomical Observatory26South Africa
University of the Western Cape26South Africa

Benchmark with other African institutes

AIMS is in the top 20 academic institutions in Africa for weighted research outputs on the Nature Index list.

AIMS is 16 out of 50 top research centres in Africa, according to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), the principal research organisation in Spain.