World's Best Scientists 2026 revealed!

D-Index & Metrics

Social Sciences and Humanities

D-Index
43
Citations
14757
World Ranking
4275
National Ranking
172

Engineering and Technology

D-Index
35
Citations
12519
World Ranking
8850
National Ranking
171

Overview

Ismael Rafols is affiliated with Leiden University in the Netherlands. Their research primarily focuses on decision sciences, with a notable emphasis on the fields of statistics, probability and uncertainty, as well as economics and econometrics. Additional subfields include public health, environmental and occupational health, sociology and political science, and information systems.

Their work spans several key topics, including scientometrics and bibliometrics research, research data management practices, global public health policies and epidemiology, psychology research and bibliometrics, health and medical research impacts, computational and text analysis methods, and health systems, economic evaluations, and quality of life.

Ismael Rafols has published regularly in several academic outlets. The frequent publication venues include:

  • Scientometrics
  • Quantitative Science Studies
  • Nature
  • Health Research Policy and Systems
  • El Profesional de la Informacion

Notable recent papers authored or coauthored by Rafols reflect a range of interdisciplinary topics and are as follows:

  • "Five ways to ensure that models serve society: a manifesto," 2020, Nature
  • "Exploring why global health needs are unmet by research efforts: the potential influences of geography, industry and publication incentives," 2020, Health Research Policy and Systems
  • "Letter: A call for a radical change in research evaluation in Spain," 2021, El Profesional de la Informacion
  • "Do synthesis centers synthesize? A semantic analysis of topical diversity in research," 2020, Research Policy
  • "Bridging the divide between qualitative and quantitative science studies," 2020, Quantitative Science Studies

Their frequent coauthors include Alfredo Yegros, Andy Stirling, Jordi Molas-Gallart, Wouter van de Klippe, and Emilio Delgado López-Cózar.

Best Publications

  • Bibliometrics: The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics

    Diana Hicks;Paul Wouters;Ludo Waltman;Sarah de Rijcke

  • Is science becoming more interdisciplinary? Measuring and mapping six research fields over time

    Alan L. Porter;Ismael Rafols

  • Approaches to understanding and measuring interdisciplinary scientific research (IDR): A review of the literature

    Caroline S. Wagner;J. David Roessner;Kamau Bobb;Julie Thompson Klein

  • Diversity and network coherence as indicators of interdisciplinarity: case studies in bionanoscience

    Ismael Rafols;Martin S. Meyer;Martin S. Meyer;Martin S. Meyer

  • A global map of science based on the ISI subject categories

    Loet Leydesdorff;Ismael Rafols

  • How journal rankings can suppress interdisciplinary research: A comparison between Innovation Studies and Business & Management

    Ismael Rafols;Ismael Rafols;Loet Leydesdorff;Alice O'Hare;Paul Nightingale

  • Science overlay maps: A new tool for research policy and library management

    Ismael Rafols;Alan L. Porter;Loet Leydesdorff

  • Five ways to ensure that models serve society: a manifesto.

    Andrea Saltelli;Gabriele Bammer;Isabelle Bruno;Erica Charters

  • Does Interdisciplinary Research Lead to Higher Citation Impact? The Different Effect of Proximal and Distal Interdisciplinarity.

    Alfredo Yegros-Yegros;Ismael Rafols;Pablo D’Este

  • Indicators of the interdisciplinarity of journals: Diversity, centrality, and citations

    Loet Leydesdorff;Ismael Rafols

  • Global maps of science based on the new Web-of-Science categories

    Loet Leydesdorff;Stephen Carley;Ismael Rafols

  • Distributions of avalanches in martensitic transformations.

    Eduard Vives;Jordi Ortín;Lluís Mañosa;Ismael Ràfols

  • Interactive overlay maps for US patent (USPTO) data based on International Patent Classification (IPC)

    Loet Leydesdorff;Duncan Kushnir;Ismael Rafols

  • How cross-disciplinary is bionanotechnology? Explorations in the specialty of molecular motors

    Ismael Rafols;Martin S. Meyer;Martin S. Meyer;Martin S. Meyer

  • Content-based and algorithmic classifications of journals: Perspectives on the dynamics of scientific communication and indexer effects

    Ismael Rafols;Loet Leydesdorff

  • Patent overlay mapping: Visualizing technological distance

    Luciano Kay;Nils C. Newman;Jan L. Youtie;Alan L. Porter

  • Interactive overlays: a new method for generating global journal maps from Web-of-Science data

    Loet Leydesdorff;Ismael Rafols

  • Big Pharma, little science? A bibliometric perspective on Big Pharma's R&D decline

    Ismael Rafols;Ismael Rafols;Michael M. Hopkins;Jarno Hoekman;Josh Siepel

  • INTERFACE GROWTH AND PATTERN FORMATION IN BACTERIAL COLONIES

    M. Matsushita;J. Wakita;H. Itoh;I. Ràfols

  • Why researchers publish in non-mainstream journals: Training, knowledge bridging, and gap filling

    Diego Chavarro;Puay Tang;Ismael Rafols;Ismael Rafols

  • How journal rankings can suppress interdisciplinarity: the case of innovation studies and business and management

    I. Rafols;L. Leydesdorff;A. O'Hare;P. Nightingale

  • Interactive Overlay Maps for US Patent (USPTO) Data Based on International Patent Classifications (IPC)

    Loet Leydesdorff;Duncan Kushnir;Ismael Rafols

Frequent Co-Authors

Loet Leydesdorff
Loet Leydesdorff University of Amsterdam
Martin Meyer
Martin Meyer University of Kent
Andrew Stirling
Andrew Stirling University of Sussex
Alan L. Porter
Alan L. Porter Georgia Institute of Technology
Thed N. van Leeuwen
Thed N. van Leeuwen Leiden University
Alex Coad
Alex Coad Waseda University
Adrian Smith
Adrian Smith University of Oxford
Paul Wouters
Paul Wouters Leiden University
Antoni Planes
Antoni Planes University of Barcelona
Antony M. Carr
Antony M. Carr University of Sussex

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