03-13-07

Media Release

New rankings: OSU leads the nation in agricultural research, scores high in geoscience

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Oregon State University is ranked tops in the nation in the study of agricultural sciences and sixth for its geosciences research, based on the citation impact of its scientists’ published research.

Published in recent reports from Science Watch, the rankings are based on trends and performance of the top 100 federally-funded U.S. universities and reflect the number of times scientists cited research in peer-reviewed journals. An impact score, calculated as citations-per-page during a four-year period, is reported for 21 fields of science. For example, during 2001-05, Yale University had the highest impact for law, Harvard University, the highest impact for clinical medicine.

Oregon State University had the highest impact for agricultural sciences, followed by the University of Wisconsin, Cornell, Rutgers, University of California at Davis and Penn State. OSU was sixth in the study of geosciences, just behind Princeton University and ahead of such institutions as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

“This ranking demonstrates the important work our researchers are doing and their recognition as the top experts in their fields,” said Thayne Dutson, dean of OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences.

Research and education in 20 departments and programs within the College of Agricultural Sciences are closely tied to the human and natural resources of the state of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest.

Geoscience at OSU includes work in the Department of Geosciences in the College of Science, as well as the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, with more than 90 faculty doing research in such fields as oceanography, atmospheric sciences, geology, volcanology, water resources, environmental quality, mineral and energy resources, natural resource and land use management, geographic information science, earthquakes, active tectonics, climate change and ecosystem informatics.

“This is a tribute to the quality of the work being done by our faculty, graduate students, staff and others at OSU,” said Roger Nielson, chair of the Department of Geosciences. “The important aspect of this rating is that it’s a quality metric. It measures impact of the specific research, not just how many papers we publish.”