The University of Macau (UM) has been included in the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database for ranking among the top 1 per cent in terms of citation frequency of published papers in the field of clinical medicine. In addition to this field, so far UM has been included in the database for ranking among the top 1 per cent in four other fields, namely engineering, pharmacology and toxicology, computer science, and social sciences, general. UM is one of the four universities in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan that have been included in the ESI database in a new field this year, which shows international recognition of UM’s research capacity.

The ESI is an important indicator commonly used for evaluating the academic quality and influence of universities and research institutes in the international community. It is also one of the globally-recognised and important references for evaluating an institute’s academic development. The database only ranks fields with papers that have been ranked among the top 1 per cent in terms of citation frequency in the last 10 years. The ESI Highly Cited Papers list currently contains 92 papers published by UM scholars. This is testament to UM’s important and continuous contributions to the various fields and the university’s international recognition in the academic circle.

This year, 24 universities in mainland China have been included in the ESI database for ranking among the top 1 per cent in a new field. They include Tsinghua University, the Renmin University of China, Nanjing University, and the Zhejiang University of Technology. Four universities in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan have been included in the database for ranking among the top 1 per cent in a new field. The universities are UM, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology, and Asia University. The inclusion shows the increase of citation impact of a university and its breakthroughs in a particular field.