Nobel laureates are not hot

Abstract

The achievements of all 97 Nobel laureates in Chemistry, Economy, Medicine, and Physics of the period 2010–2019 are compared with achievements of top non-Nobel scientists in terms of standard bibliometric indicators (number of publications, number of citations, Hirsch index), of the numbers of highly cited papers and of hot papers (as defined by WoS®), and of c, a composite score (Ioannidis et al. in PLoS Biol 14:e1002501, 2016). Ninety recent Nobel laureates were in top 100,000 scientists in terms of c, and 45 recent Nobel laureates were in top 6000 scientists in terms of c. Only 32 recent Nobel laureates were in top 6000 scientists in terms of ch (Hirsch-type index with self-citations excluded),32 recent Nobel laureates were in top 6000 scientists in terms of the number of citations (self-citations excluded), 17 recent Nobel laureates were among the 6000 Highly Cited Researchers (WoS®), 4 recent Nobel laureates were in top 6000 scientists in terms of the number of hot papers, and 2 recent Nobel laureates were in top 6000 scientists in terms of the number of highly cited papers.