The Materials Science field includes journals that cover the admixtures of matter or the basic materials from which products are constructed:

• ceramics
• paper and wood products
• polymers
• textiles
• composites
• coatings & films
• biomaterials
• metals and alloys
• metallurgy
• application of chemistry to materials design and testing
• superconductors and semiconductors
• ferroelectrics
• dielectrics

The top 20 institutions are a representation of academic and government institutions throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Institutions in Japan and the US are particularly prevalent, with seven representing each country.

The most-cited institution in the field of Materials Science is the Chinese Academy of Sciences, representing more than 100 facilities throughout China, with 9,355 papers cited a total of 34,015 times to date. Among the highly cited papers for this organization are such topics as nanocrystalline metals, super-hydrophobic surfaces, and trititanate nanotubes.

Germany’s Max Planck Society, with upwards of 80 component installations in assorted disciplines, ranks at #2, with 3,154 papers cited a total of 33,010 times to date. Frank Caruso, author of Max Planck’s most-cited paper in the field, "Nanoengineering of particle surfaces," (Advan. Mater. 13[1]: 11+, 5 January 2001), spoke with us about his paper.

The first institution from Japan ranks at #3: Tohoku University, with 4,887 papers cited a total of 28,031 times to date. One of Tohoku’s more prolific researchers in this field, Akihisa Inoue, spoke with us about his paper, "High-strength, CU-based bulk glassy alloys in CU-ZR-TI and CU-HF-TI ternary systems (Acta Mater. 49[14]: 2645-52, 16 August 2001).

The first US institution ranks at #4: MIT, with 1,611 papers cited a total of 22,171 times to date. Among the applications for MIT’s highly cited papers are materials for bone transplantation and the immobilization of high-level nuclear waste and plutonium.

Japan’s AIST (the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, another umbrella organization representing multiple research facilities) comes in at #5, with 3,800 papers cited a total of 20,410 times to date. The other Japanese institutions in the top 20 are Osaka University (#9), Kyoto University (#10), the National Institute of Materials Science (#15), the University of Tokyo #16), and the Tokyo Institute of Technology (#17).

The University of California, Santa Barbara, ranks at #6, with 959 papers cited a total of 18,920 times to date. The remaining US institutions in the top 20 are Penn State University (#7), the University of California, Berkeley (#11), Harvard University (#18), the University of Texas (#19), and the National Institute of Standards & Technology (#20).

The University of Cambridge ranks at #8, with 2,011 papers cited a total of 17,584 times to date. Among Cambridge’s highly cited authors in this field are Richard Friend, who ranked #1 in our Special Topic on Conducting Polymers and John Robertson, whose Fast-Breaking Paper, "Diamond-like amorphous carbon" (Mat. Sci. Eng. R. 37[4-6]: 129-281, 4 May 2002), is Cambridge’s most-cited paper in this field.

The Russian Academy of Sciences ranks at #12, with 6,922 papers cited a total of 15,687 times to date. Representing Spain is the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), ranking at #13 with 2,953 papers cited a total of 15,621 times to date. France’s Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) ranks at #14, with 2,553 papers cited a total of 15,346 cites to date.

The top 20 institutions in Materials Science are listed in full in the table below: