The Netherlands’ Eindhoven University of Technology has topped a list of universities which have co-authored maximum papers with the world’s most innovative organisations. The Dutch institution published 1,316 papers with the Top 25 companies that feature in Clarivate Analytics’ list of the Top 100 Global Innovators — almost a quarter more than Harvard University, which is ranked second in the table.

But Harvard comes out ahead on the citation impact of these papers, with a score of 3.71 (compared with a world average of 1.0).The US dominates the Clarivate Analytics Table, which features 14 universities. The Netherlands has four universities, Japan has two, and France, England, mainland China, Canada and Belgium have one each in the table.

Several of the institutions are located near or have links with companies in the innovations list. For example, the Dutch technology company Philips was founded in Eindhoven in 1891 (Eindhoven University of Technology); Sony and Hitachi are based in Tokyo (University of Tokyo); 3M is headquartered in Minnesota (University of Minnesota); Dow Chemical is based in Michigan (University of Michigan); and Thales Group is situated on the outskirts of Paris (University Paris-Saclay).

The ranking is based on the papers featured in Clarivate Analytics’ (formerly Thomson Reuters Intellectual Property & Science) Web of Science database between 1980 and the present day. The citation impact is calculated by dividing the actual number of cited papers by the expected citation rate for documents of the same type, year of publication and subject area.

The Top 100 Global Innovators list was produced by analysing patent and citation data in terms of volume, success, globalisation and influence.

(Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)