Clarivate has named three sleep scientists as 2023 Citation Laureates, researchers whose work is deemed to be of Nobel class, as demonstrated by analysis carried out by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) at Clarivate.

“Clarivate uses quantitative citation data from the Web of Science, together with unparalleled qualitative analysis, to successfully identify individuals who go on to be recognized by the Nobel Assembly,” says Emmanuel Thiveaud, senior vice president for research and analytics, academia and government at Clarivate, in a release. “The achievements of the Citation Laureates 2023 are not just notable but emblematic of the kind that Clarivate identifies as Nobel-worthy. These research giants publish papers that garner more than 2,000 citations—a truly rare accolade—that should be celebrated. This list recognizes many decades of work, laying ground for countless discoveries and innovations that have transformed our world.”

In the Physiology or Medicine category, the Citation Laureates are being recognized for genetic and physiological studies of the sleep/wake cycle and the discovery of hypocretin/orexin as important regulators of sleep involved in the cause of narcolepsy. They are: 

Clifford B Saper, MD, PhD—James Jackson Putnam professor of neurology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass

Emmanuel Mignot, MD, PhD—Craig Reynolds professor of sleep medicine in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, Stanford, Calif

Masashi Yanagisawa, MD, PhD—director of the International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan; adjunct professor in the department of molecular genetics at, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas

“The thing that really gets me going is wanting to know how the brain works, and it’s actually a philosophical conundrum for the brain to understand itself,” says Saper in a video interview with Clarivate. “And it has to I think be the most fascinating challenge in biology and perhaps in all of science. As a neurologist, I also am interested in understanding how the brain works because I think it’s going to help us unravel many neurologic disorders and how to treat them properly.”

Since 2002, analysts at the Institute for Scientific Information have drawn on publication and citation data from its index of trusted journals to identify potential Nobel Prize winners in the areas of physiology or medicine, physics, chemistry, and economics. Out of more than 58 million articles and proceedings indexed in the Web of Science since 1970, only about 8,700 (.01%) have been cited 2,000 or more times. It is from the authors of this group of papers that Citation Laureates are identified and selected.

Since 2002, experts at the ISI have identified 71 Citation Laureates prior to their Nobel Prize success, often years before they were recognized in Stockholm.

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