Science Research Cited Frequently

Hamilton is one of the nation's most frequently cited research institutions relative to its size, based on a study in Science magazine of more than 4.2 million U.S.-based scholarly papers published across three decades. Appearing in the Nov. 21 issue of the magazine, the study, "Multi-University Research Teams: Shifting Impact, Geography and Stratification in Science," found Hamilton ranked 15th in citations per faculty member and 24th in citations per paper in science and engineering. The College was considered as part of a group of 662 colleges and universities recently supported by National Science Foundation grants.

The article tracks what it identifies as "a dramatic shift in knowledge production … across virtually all fields of science, engineering and social science," concluding not only that "teamwork in science increasingly spans university boundaries" but also that "elite ­universities play a dominant role in this shift" and that the development of scientific knowledge is taking place "in fewer rather than more centers of high-impact science" as time passes. The writers identify "a remarkable and nearly universal rise since 1975 in the frequency of collaborations between authors at different universities" in the fields of science, engineering and the social sciences — recently roughly one-third of the total publications in those fields — while one-author papers remain dominant and relatively constant in the arts and humanities.