Simon Fraser University’s (SFU) Scholarly Impact of the Week series celebrates the work of SFU researchers, while raising their profile and mobilizing their research impact. Since its inception in 2021, the series has featured the work of more than 80 SFU scholars from all eight faculties. Thank you to all the faculty and staff members who have collaborated with us to make this possible.
Throughout 2022, SFU scholars continued to make breakthrough scientific discoveries that are transforming their disciplines, benefitting our communities and broadening our understanding of the planet. They have advanced strategies in climate change mitigation and adaption, kept us healthy and informed in a post-COVID world, and mobilized their research in the classroom and into the cosmos. In every discipline, SFU researchers contribute valuable knowledge about the multifaceted and changing world around us.
Thank you to all who participated in the Scholarly Impact of the Week series in 2022. We should be very proud of the diverse scope and reach of the research enterprise at SFU. I am excited to see what new discoveries we will make in 2023 and the positive impact it will have on the world. We wish the entire SFU community a wonderful upcoming holiday season.
- Dugan O'Neil, SFU Vice-President, Research and International
Our weekly impact series featured advancements in climate research and climate action from scholars like Alison Shaw, Glyn Williams-Jones and Kirsten Zickfeld. We explored vital reconciliation work with Eldon Yellowhorn.
We joined researchers such as Jonathan Moore, Anne Salomon, Ailene MacPherson and Leah Bendell on their investigative journeys into the natural environment. We highlighted cutting-edge breakthroughs in computing technology from Jiangchuan Liu and Stephanie Simmons. Researchers like David Vocadlo, Julian Guttman and Scott Lear contributed important insights into the understanding of health and disease.
We have highlighted below just some of the scholarly works that topped the Altmetric attention scores and the top-cited academic papers from SFU. Here is a snapshot of the top 22 publications of 2022—in both the traditional and Altmetric top-cited rating systems.
Please note: These data were pulled December 1, 2022 and do not reflect work published after that date.
SFU's top-cited articles of 2022
On average, SFU researchers publish 2,600 journal articles per year, over 40% of which appear in the world's top 10% journals. The 2022 top-cited articles look at the field-weighted citation impact which considers the differences in research behaviour across disciplines.
According to Scopus, fields such as medicine and biochemistry typically produce more output with more co-authors and longer reference lists than researchers working in the social sciences. This is a reflection of research culture, and not research performance. The methodology of field-weighted citation impact accounts for these disciplinary differences.
A field-weighted citation impact of 1 means that the output performed as expected within the global average for that discipline, while more than 1 means that the output is more cited than expected. For example, 1.48 means 48% more cited than expected. Based on this ranking, SFU scholars remain authoritative voices across all disciplines and in a range of fundamental, interdisciplinary and applied research areas.
Altmetric: What made headlines and caught our attention
SFU research made headlines in 2022, with our scholars and their work enjoying a consistent media presence. Distinguished SFU Professor of psychology Lara Aknin chaired The Lancet’s Mental Health & Wellbeing Task Force, whose article on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic was mentioned on Twitter over 11,000 times. Health sciences professor Bruce Lanphear has four articles in the Altmetric top 22. He was mentioned globally in the media over 650 times for his research on environmental toxins, including his work with The Lancet Commission on pollution and health.
SFU uses the Altmetric database to capture metrics and qualitative data that are complementary to traditional, citation-based metrics. Altmetric scores pull data from traditional and social media, from sources all over the world.
Altmetric’s attention score represents a weighted count of mentions in traditional and nontraditional media platforms for a specific research output.
* Please note: SFU faculty scholars listed do not include all contributors to each publication. Many of these publications include SFU students and non-SFU authors as well. To view the full list of authors, please visit the link to each article.
We encourage the SFU research community to engage with us and submit an Impact idea for 2023.