Clarivate experts celebrate 2022 Nobel success

Clarivate, a global leader in providing trusted information and insights to accelerate the pace of innovation, today celebrates the seven new Nobel Laureates across the fields of science and economics who were accurately identified as potential Nobel Prize recipients. Each individual was awarded the designation of Citation Laureate™ several years before being named by the Nobel Assembly – four, more than a decade – thanks to expert interpretation of high-quality citation data at Clarivate.

Clarivate is the only organisation in the world to use quantitative data together with expert qualitative analysis to identify the pinnacle realm of scientific contributions recorded
in the Web of Science.™ Using this unique approach, Clarivate identifies researchers of Nobel class on its annual Citation Laureates list and forecasts potential Nobel Prize recipients.

This year, Clarivate anticipated Nobel Laureates in three fields: Physics, Chemistry and Economics, demonstrating the association between the citation record which reflects influence
throughout a research community and peer judgement. Since 2002, there have been 71 Citation Laureates who have gone on to receive a Nobel Prize.

The seven Citation Laureates named as Nobel Laureates in 2022 are:

• The 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics, awarded to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger, for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.
• Clarivate forecasted a Nobel Prize for Clauser, Aspect and Zeilinger more than a decade ago, in 2011, based on a series of highly cited and independently published papers that appeared in the 1960s, 1980s, and 1990s, respectively. Their selection recognized the obvious importance of their experimental verification of "spooky action at a distance," a phenomenon of quantum mechanics that strains our imagination. Their award brings the Clarivate tally for successful Physics forecasts to 20 since 2002.
• The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Morten P. Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.
• Clarivate selected Sharpless, Bertozzi and Meldal separately as probable Nobel recipients in 2013, 2015 and 2019, respectively. Click chemistry, pioneered by Sharpless and Meldal, has already had tremendous impact and application across many fields and especially in the pharmaceutical industry. Bioorthogonal chemistry, for which Bertozzi is recognised, is a powerful method for studying biological processes and will enable more precise clinical therapies. Clarivate has successfully forecasted 13 Chemistry Nobel Prize recipients since 2002.
• The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2022 was awarded jointly to Douglas W. Diamond alongside Ben S. Bernanke and Philip H. Dybvig for research on banks and financial crises.
• Clarivate predicted a Nobel Prize for Diamond way back in 2011 for his analysis of financial intermediation and delegated monitoring, which describes the role and utility of banks. This year’s prize is broader in scope and includes how the banking sector deals with financial crises. The new Laureates’ key papers are cited thousands of times, one by Diamond and Dybvig about 3,000 times, and were published as long ago as 1983. Diamond’s award makes 22 successful forecasts in Economics for Clarivate since 2002.

To explain the success of Clarivate in identifying future Nobel Laureates, David Pendlebury, Head of Research Analysis at the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate said, “There
are many Nobel-worthy researchers in the world, which makes accurately predicting who will be awarded the honor of a Nobel Prize a special challenge. Our approach at Clarivate is to start with the data – a quantitative analysis of the top 0.01% of highly cited papers in the Web of Science (2,000+ citations), with our analysts then drawing on their deep expertise to add a layer of qualitative analysis. In this way we can identify potential Nobel awardees years ahead of their recognition by the Nobel committee, as evidenced by the seven Citation Laureates awarded this year. Their foundational work has led to some of the world’s greatest breakthroughs, and it is an honor to see them recognised with a Nobel Prize.”