In 2019, data was collected to identify the top 100,000 scientists worldwide based upon their published research (Ioannidis et al., \ 2019). This publicly available dataset standardized metrics that define impact of their scientific work. The data was updated in 2020 (Ioannidis et al., 2020) and has two components: career long impact data (research published between 1996 and 2019) and a one-year snapshot data (research published in 2019). The two data sets are complimentary in that the first looks at long-term productivity of a scientist and the latter looks at performance over a recent calendar year – which is especially important for younger scientists who have not had as much time for their publications to accumulate citations.
Seven professors in the Department of Horticulture at Michigan State University ranked in the top 2% of their field based upon career long impact data: Randy Beaudry, Bert Cregg, Jim Hancock, Jiming Jiang, Muraleedharan Nair, Brad Rowe, and Erik Runkle. In addition, these seven plus five other Horticulture faculty members were listed in the 2019 top 2% year data: Cornelius Barry, Dan Chitwood, Patrick Edger, Kristin Getter, and Ning Jiang.
