How the ranks are computed

Source

All data comes from OpenAlex, the open scholarly index (CC0). A work’s citation count is OpenAlex’s cited_by_count on the snapshot date shown on the list. Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science count different sources and will give different numbers; a rank here is a rank in OpenAlex, nothing else.

Cohort

A cohort is every work OpenAlex records with the journal as its primary publication venue (primary_location.source.id) and a given publication year, of type article, review, book-chapter. Editorials, letters, errata, news items and other paratext are excluded by that type filter. Retracted works are excluded. The cohort size shown on each list is the number of works that remain.

Cutoff

Lists show the top 10, 50 or 100 works depending on how much the journal published that year:

• under 30 eligible works: no list;
• 30 to 299 works: top 10;
• 300 to 1,999 works: top 50;
• 2,000 or more works: top 100.

Every entry also shows its percentile (rank divided by cohort size), which is the number that compares across journals of different sizes.

Years

A publication year gets a list 2 years after it ends, so citations have had time to accumulate. Right now lists exist for 2010 to 2024. New years are added each January.

Snapshot rule

A list is computed once, on the snapshot date printed on the page, and is then frozen. Ranks never move afterwards, even though citation counts keep growing, so a rank quoted in a CV or on a website stays true. If a list has to be rebuilt (for example after a correction), the page shows the new snapshot date and the old list is retired, not silently overwritten.

Publication gate

A computed list is published only when it has at least 10 usable entries and at least 30% of them have an abstract available in OpenAlex (some publishers withhold abstracts). Lists that fail the gate stay in draft and are not shown or indexed.

Authors

Author names and ORCID iDs come from OpenAlex’s authorship records. An author can ask to have their name withheld on every list; the entry then shows “author withheld” and stays in place, because the list is a statement about the article, not about the person. Use the “Is this your paper?” link under any entry, or write to team@avidnote.com.

Citing a rank

The claim page of each entry offers a ready sentence of the form “Ranked 14 of 612 (top 2.3%) most-cited articles published in [journal] in [year]. Source: Kahubi Rankings, OpenAlex citation counts as of [date], [URL]”. The URL is the permanent list page, where the cohort size, snapshot date and all ranks can be checked.

What this is not

A rank is not an award and not a quality judgment. Highly cited papers include methods papers, reviews and occasionally contested work; the list says only how often each was cited. Kahubi has no commercial relationship with any journal or author on these pages.

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