Recently I have become very interested in “Science of Science” related topics.

JP, Chris and I, while having coffee in Santa Barbara, decided to try to characterize the “famous ecologists”. We sent a questionnaire to all the Highly Cited ecologists and environmental scientists (according to ISI - Thompson Reuters). Many responded. Their answers are summarized in the new paper:

Parker, J.N., Lortie, C., Allesina, S., 2010
Characterizing a Scientific Elite: The Social Characteristics of the Most Highly Cited Scientists in Environmental Science and Ecology
To appear in Scientometrics. The abstract:

In science, a relatively small pool of researchers garners a disproportionally large number of citations. Still, very little is known about the social characteristics of highly cited scientists. This is unfortunate as these researchers wield a disproportional impact on their fields, and the study of highly cited scientists can enhance our understanding of the conditions which foster highly cited work, the systematic social inequalities which exist in science, and scientific careers more generally. This study provides information on this understudied subject by examining the social characteristics and opinions of the 0.1% most cited environmental scientists and ecologists. Overall, the social characteristics of these researchers tend to reflect broader patterns of inequality in the global scientific community. However, while the social characteristics of these researchers mirror those of other scientific elites in important ways, they differ in others, revealing findings which are both novel and surprising, perhaps indicating multiple pathways to becoming highly cited.