The correlation coefficient between citation metrics and winning a Nobel or Abel Prize

TL;DR

This paper estimates the correlation between citation metrics and winning prestigious awards like Nobel, Abel, and Fields Medal using ordinal ranking data, finding moderate to strong correlations.

Contribution

It introduces a maximum likelihood method to infer correlation coefficients from ordinal prize winner rankings based on citation metrics.

Findings

Correlation of 0.47 between citation metrics and Abel Prize

Correlation of 0.59 between citation metrics and Fields Medal

Correlation of 0.65 between citation metrics and Nobel Prize

Abstract

Computing such correlation coefficient would be straightforward had we had available the rankings given by the prize committee to all scientists in the pool. In reality we only have citation rankings for all scientists. This means, however, that we have the ordinal rankings of the prize winners with regard to citation metrics. I use maximum likelihood method to infer the most probable correlation coefficient to produce the observed pattern of ordinal ranks of the prize winners. I get the correlation coefficients of 0.47 and 0.59 between the composite citation indicator and getting Abel Prize and Fields Medal, respectively. The correlation coefficient between getting a Nobel Prize and the Q-factor is 0.65. These coefficients are of the same magnitude as the correlation coefficient between Elo ratings of the chess players and their popularity measured as numbers of webpages mentioning the players.