UWE Bristol academic paper named as one of this century’s most-cited

Psychology associate professor Dr Victoria Clarke has co-authored the third most-cited academic paper of this century, according to new analysis released by the prestigious research journal Nature.

The paper, ‘Using thematic analysis in psychology’, was written in 2006 and has been cited between 100,000 and 230,000 times, based on insight from five databases tracking academic citations covering tens of millions of papers published in the twenty-first century.

Co-authored with Professor Ginny Braun from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, while she was on sabbatical leave at UWE Bristol, the paper’s intention was to improve the definitions and descriptions of ‘thematic analysis’, a qualitative research approach, for students.

Once published, other researchers started referring to thematic analysis as a method they used and referencing the pair’s academic paper, which saw its citation count shoot up.

Victoria said: “We knew the paper was highly cited but were amazed when Nature got in touch to let us know it was among the most highly cited papers of this century. It was incredible to see that our paper is also in the top ten most cited papers of all time.

“As a qualitative researcher, it feels wonderful for qualitative methods to be represented alongside scientific research. It's exciting to see the increasingly global reach and impact of our work.”

The popularity of the paper has created many opportunities for Victoria and Ginny to connect with students and researchers from around the world, including in France, India, Canada, Japan, Hungary and Ireland, among other countries.

Nature’s analysis suggests the papers that attract the most citations tend to describe scientific methods and approaches, which the publication describes as “the workhorses on which scientists depend”, rather than big scientific breakthroughs.