November 24, 2020 | Erin Bluvas, bluvase@sc.edu
SmartState Endowed Chair Jamie Lead (Department of Environmental Health Sciences; SmartState Center for Environmental Nanoscience and Risk (CENR)) and Distinguished Professor Emeritus Steven Blair (Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics; Department of Exercise Science) have once again been included in the Clarivate Analytics’ Highly Cited Researchers List. Known as Reuters until 2016, Clarivate, which also collects data and awards impact factors for peer-reviewed journals, names only scientists whose articles produce citations in the top one percent by field and year in the Web of Science®.
“Three faculty from UofSC were included in the 2020 Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers List, and two of these individuals are from the Arnold School,” says Thomas Chandler, Dean of the Arnold School of Public Health. “Congratulations to Steve Blair and Jamie Lead once again for making this rarified air.”
Lead’s focus on environmental nanoscience and remediation has resulted in more than 200 peer-reviewed articles, six patents and six books in total, with more than half since he arrived at the Arnold School in 2012 to establish the CENR. Now comprised of six faculty members and approximately 15-20 doctoral students and staff, CENR members study how to minimize the risks and maximize the benefits of nanoparticles on environmental and human health. Focus areas include soil, sediment, water and atmospheric nanoscience as well as social sciences. Lead has been included in the Highly Cited List every year since it was established in 2014. He has a Web of Science h-index of 52, and has been cited over 13,500 times, with over 11,500 of those since 2012.
Blair joined the Arnold School in 2006 to wrap up a career of research on physical activity and health that spanned more than five decades. He has published more than 850 scientific papers and chapters. Though he retired in 2016, he continues to publish widely with an emphasis on the relationship between physical activity and health outcomes. Among his many honors, Blair received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition in 2014; and the U.S. Surgeon General’s Medallion in 1996. This is his sixth year on Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researchers List.
Compiled annually, the Highly Cited Researchers list recognizes leading researchers in the sciences and social sciences. The 2020 list includes 6,167 researchers (about 0.1 percent of all researchers) in 21 fields from more than 60 nations around the world, with the United States serving as the home base for 2,650 (41.5 percent) of these authors.
“In the race for knowledge, it is human capital that is fundamental,” David Pendlebury, Senior Citation Analyst at the Institute for Scientific Information, said in a Clarivate Analytics press release. “This list identifies and celebrates exceptional individual researchers who are having a great impact on the research community as measured by the rate at which their work is being cited by others.”
Related:
Jamie Lead and Steven Blair named in Clarivate Analytics’ 2019 Highly Cited Researchers List
Five Arnold School researchers named in Clarivate Analytics’ Highly Cited Researchers List
Jamie Lead included in Highly Cited Researchers list by Clarivate Analytics fourth year in a row