As the previous editions, starting from 2020, also this year Elsevier has published the database of top-cited scientists that provides standardized information on citations, h-index, co-authorship adjusted hm-index, citations to papers in different authorship positions and a composite indicator (c-score).
In the paper “August 2026 data-update for Updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators” the Contributor (John P.A. Ioannidis, Stanford University) classifies scientists into 20 scientific fields and 174 sub-fields (Science-Metrix classification). Field- and subfield-specific percentiles are also provided for all scientists with at least 5 papers. Career-long data are updated to end-of-2025 and single recent year data pertain to citations received during calendar year 2025. The selection is based on the top 100,000 scientists by c-score (with and without self-citations) or a percentile rank of 2% or above in the sub-field. This version (9) is based on the August 1, 2026 snapshot from Scopus, updated to end of citation year 2025. Calculations were performed using all Scopus author profiles as of August 1, 2026. The c-score focuses on impact (citations) rather than productivity (number of publications) and it also incorporates information on co-authorship and author positions (single, first, last author).
