The science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators is a multidimensional ranking of the world's scientists produced since 2015 by a team of researchers led by John P. A. Ioannidis at Stanford.
[1][2] Based on data from Scopus, this indicators explore about 8 million records of scientists’ citations in order to rank a subset of 200,000 most-cited authors across all scientific fields.
[3] The ranking is achieved via a composite indicator built on six citation metrics Data (about 200,000 records) are freely downloadable from Elsevier through the International Center for the Study of Research (ICSR) Lab.
Many authors point to the importance of the index created by Ioannidis in the context of accurate, cheap and simple descriptions of research systems,[6][7][8] Being listed in Stanford's Rank is treated as prestigious and translates into increased visibility of scientists, which may translate into increased networking potential and for obtaining research funding.
[7][16] The older methodological paper [17] is quoted even more, from journal such as MIT Press's Quantitative Science Studies,[18] Springer's Scientometrics[19] and many others.