A Critical Correlate of QS Subject Ranking and Stanford’s Top 2% Scientists in Top Dental Schools

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to evaluate the relationship between QS subject rankings and the performance of top 2% scientists in the top 20 dental schools. METHODS: On 28 October, 2024, data sets released by the "QS World University Rankings by Subject 2024: Dentistry" and by Stanford University about the top 2% of scientists in academia (Version 7, published in 2024) were downloaded from their official websites. The top 2% of scientists who mainly published in dentistry and were affiliated with the top 20 dental schools were identified. From 28 October to 8 November, 2024, the official websites of the top 20 dental schools were visited to manually extract their faculty staff information. RESULTS: There were a total of 363 top 2% scientists affiliated with these schools according to the Stanford database. Academic Centre for Dentistry Amsterdam (ACTA) had the highest total number of top 2% scientists (n = 32), but only 12 (37.5%) are current faculty staff. Meanwhile, Sichuan University has the highest number of top 2% scientists who are current faculty staff (n = 24, 100%). On average, the ratio of current faculty staff being top 2% scientists was 12.4%, and that of academic staff was 19.9%. The University of Hong Kong had the highest QS ranked dental school with above-average numbers in these two aspects. The number of top 2% scientists from these 20 dental schools positively correlated to their QS H-index score in 3 out of the last 5 years. Some limitations of the analysis include that faculty staff information was manually determined, and that some scientists had duplicate entries or inaccurate affiliation information in the database. CONCLUSION: The number of top 2% scientists of the top 20 dental schools positively correlated to their overall QS score and QS H-index score. The QS academic reputation score would be higher if the active top 2% scientists had more equal performance in terms of total citations received and overall composite score.