Top-cited scientists by career stage
4 career stages · 249,310 authors, by the year of their first paper
When did the top 2% scientists start publishing?
The 249,310 researchers in the 2025 list of top-cited scientists, the annual ranking often called the Stanford–Elsevier top 2% scientists list, by the year of their first paper indexed in Scopus, in the four career stages the dataset’s authors use for their age-stratified rankings. The stage counts from the first paper, not from age. Each stage has a page with its top countries, institutions and fields and its first 100 scientists, and the four can be compared side by side.
| Career stage | Listed authors |
|---|---|
| Started before 1992 | 73,304 |
| Started 1992–2001 | 60,750 |
| Started 2002–2011 | 75,626 |
| Started 2012 or later | 39,630 |