Of course, that presupposes that we can identify them! A group of researchers at Stanford have made a recent attempt to do just that. The paper is available, unpaywalled, here. They produce a composite indicator to rank authors. So where are the leading authors? Unsurprisingly, the USA, UK and Germany come out tops. But Ireland does respectably well. We have 547 authors out of the 158k; thats well above our global population weight.
| Country | Number |
| usa | 68016 |
| gbr | 15001 |
| deu | 8792 |
| can | 7225 |
| jpn | 6316 |
| aus | 5441 |
| chn | 5272 |
| fra | 5048 |
| ita | 4008 |
| nld | 3350 |
| che | 2546 |
| swe | 2546 |
| esp | 2290 |
| isr | 1630 |
| dnk | 1495 |
| ind | 1492 |
| bel | 1413 |
| kor | 1350 |
| twn | 1151 |
| fin | 1037 |
| aut | 962 |
| nor | 947 |
| hkg | 878 |
| nzl | 803 |
| sgp | 756 |
| pol | 726 |
| rus | 709 |
| grc | 648 |
| tur | 614 |
| bra | 600 |
| irl | 547 |
| zaf | 536 |
| irn | 433 |
| prt | 385 |
| cze | 335 |
| sau | 321 |
| mex | 291 |
| hun | 282 |
| egy | 219 |
| arg | 171 |
| mys | 163 |
| tha | 136 |
| chl | 127 |
| are | 114 |
| svn | 114 |
| rou | 100 |
Not surprisingly these Irish are concentrated in the universities, as can be seen below where we show all institutes more than 10 members. The remaining numbers are mainly affiliated with either hospitals or with industry/company research centers.
| Institute | Number |
| Trinity College Dublin | 113 |
| University College Dublin | 109 |
| University College Cork | 56 |
| National University of Ireland Galway | 52 |
| University of Limerick | 33 |
| Dublin City University | 21 |
| Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) | 20 |
| Maynooth University | 16 |
| Tyndall National Institute at National University of Ireland, Cork | 10 |
Finally and not surprising, the fields of interest of these top scientists are concentrated in STEM. This is however a bit of a red herring as citation patters vary widely across fields and disciplines, and citation counts will always be lower for Arts and humanities than STEM. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see
| General & Internal Medicine | 30 |
| Dairy & Animal Science | 25 |
| Artificial Intelligence & Image Processing | 21 |
| Microbiology | 20 |
| Food Science | 16 |
| Neurology & Neurosurgery | 15 |
| Applied Physics | 15 |
| Energy | 15 |
| Networking & Telecommunications | 14 |
| Analytical Chemistry | 14 |
| Psychiatry | 13 |
| Optoelectronics & Photonics | 12 |
| Biochemistry & Molecular Biology | 12 |
| Biomedical Engineering | 11 |
| Surgery | 11 |
| Biotechnology | 10 |
| Immunology | 10 |
Finally the top 20 fields in Ireland, caveated above, show marked differences to the global top 20
| Ireland top 20 | Global top 20 |
| General & Internal Medicine | Neurology & Neurosurgery |
| Dairy & Animal Science | Applied Physics |
| Artificial Intelligence & Image Processing | Oncology & Carcinogenesis |
| Microbiology | Artificial Intelligence & Image Processing |
| Energy | Energy |
| Neurology & Neurosurgery | Biochemistry & Molecular Biology |
| Food Science | Materials |
| Applied Physics | Cardiovascular System & Hematology |
| Networking & Telecommunications | Networking & Telecommunications |
| Analytical Chemistry | Developmental Biology |
| Optoelectronics & Photonics | Microbiology |
| Psychiatry | Immunology |
| Biochemistry & Molecular Biology | Plant Biology & Botany |
| Surgery | Nuclear & Particle Physics |
| Biomedical Engineering | Organic Chemistry |
| Immunology | Endocrinology & Metabolism |
| Biotechnology | Chemical Physics |
| Oncology & Carcinogenesis | General & Internal Medicine |
| Organic Chemistry | Optoelectronics & Photonics |
| Nursing | Mechanical Engineering & Transports |
Brian M. Lucey 