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The rate at which academic papers are cited by other academics is one of the measures of a leading university.

So it should come as no surprise that UWA, in the year leading up to its inclusion in the Academic Ranking of World Universities Top 100, doubled its rate of highly-cited academic papers between 2009-11.

Thomson Reuters, the international industry leader in publications information, identified 123 UWA researchers as authors involved in 58 highly-cited papers published in 2011.

Since 2011, the University has celebrated its successful highly cited staff members.  Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Robyn Owens hosted an event last month to congratulate both the 123 authors of the 2011 Highly Cited Papers, and 24 individual researchers classified as being Highly Cited Researchers by Thomson Reuters.

Two leading researchers spoke briefly to the gathering at the University Club about their research experiences.

Winthrop Professor Mark Randolph, a Highly Cited Researcher in Civil Engineering from the Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems, passed on some advice he had been given many years ago.

"Just after I'd finished my PhD, about 25 years ago, I was given this advice," he said. "Never publish a complete piece of work.  Others won't be able to stop themselves from latching on to it and finishing it for you!"

He also admitted that he had found an error in his second most highly-cited paper - a few years after it had been published and frequently cited.

Professor Ian Small, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, asked what makes a highly cited paper?

"Everybody has published papers that they are very happy with but are rarely cited," he said. "Equally, we have all had papers that we are not so proud of which end up with heaps of citations".

"How useful your paper is to the scientific community is more important than it being seen as excellent."

W/Professor Small said providing a new method for doing things or summarising a field would usually result in lots of citations. "Of course, the best way to ensure citations is with a scientific breakthrough. But that's not all that common.

"We can be proud of being useful to the scientific community.  If we make a breakthrough at the same time, that's a bonus!"

Professor Owens said there was a vast difference between disciplines. "What might be highly cited in the journals of one area could be almost ignored in the journals of another," she said.

"Our aim is to conduct high quality research that the world cares about. Citations are one proxy for quality that works reasonably well at the level of the whole University."