Identification of potential young talented individuals in the natural and life sciences: A bibliometric approach

Identification of young talented individuals based on bibliometric data is not an easy task. Citation-based data usually need too long to accrue. In this study, we propose a method for the identification of potential young talented individuals which is not citation-based. Since potential talent is defined in this study in terms of early publication performance, three different indicators and their combinations were used: We not only used (1) the number of papers in high-impact journals, but also (2) the total number of papers, and (3) the number of papers as a corresponding author. An older cohort including potential talents with their first publication between 1999 and 2003 was used to find the most suitable indicator combination. Two additional indicators were used for the validation step: (1) The citation impact on the level of individual papers and (2) the number of papers that are linked to grants. The best performing indicator combination was applied to the time period 2007-2011 for identifying young potentially talented individuals who published their first paper within this time period. We produced a set of 46,200 potentially talented individuals that can be downloaded free of charge.

Automated summary

This study proposes a citation-free method for identifying potential young talented individuals based on their early publication performance. Three different indicators and their combinations were used to define potential talent. The best performing indicator combination was applied to identify young potentially talented individuals who published their first paper between 2007-2011, resulting in a set of 46,200 individuals that can be downloaded for free.