Forecasting Nobel Prize Winners: Using Research Analytics to Make Predictions

September is always an exciting month. In many parts of the world it signals the end of summer and new school season, while in the business world; it’s the end of Q3, heralding a renewed vigor to ensure the year ends with success. In the realm of scientific research, it signifies the release of the annual Thomson Reuters forecasts of individuals that we consider most likely to win a Nobel Prize in the areas of Chemistry, Economics, Physics and Physiology/Medicine; based on cutting-edge analysis of our scientific citation data more commonly known as the Citation Laureates.

These Citation Laureates are individuals on the leading edge of science and economics. They have discovered breakthrough concepts or research, uncovered novel insights and identified new applications for their work. They are the innovators we will look back on as improving the world for future generations.

To understand why our Nobel Prize predictions are called “Citation Laureates”, we must consider that within the scientific research community, literature citations at high-frequency are a form of collegial acknowledgment for breakthrough thinking. By analyzing these citations we take the pulse of the research world and identify which researchers are blazing the most promising trails and making the most influential discoveries. These individuals are almost all the top 0.1% of researchers within their fields in terms of highly cited papers, making them of “Nobel Class” and likely to earn a Nobel Prize – either this year or in the future. So while some of them may receive an early-morning phone call from Sweden this year, we also forecast them in perpetuity.

Citation data also uncovers interesting changes in the research community. Since 1901, for example, only 17 women have been awarded Nobel Prizes in the sciences. However, the analysis signals a narrowing of this gender gap by identifying a significant growth in female authorship of science’s most prominent research. Four of the 2015 Thomson Reuters Citation Laureates newcomers are women, while between 2002 and 2014 just six women were named in the list.

This year I invite all science enthusiasts to weigh-in with their own Nobel Prize predictions by participating in the “People’s Choice Poll”, drawn from the Citation Laureates in contention for their respective Nobel. Individuals who are interested in taking part can visit StateOfInnovation.com to make their picks and we will publish the poll results in the run-up to the official Nobel Prize announcements in October.