Every year in autumn Clarivate, the scholarly analytics company, elects a small circle of highly cited scientists and economists to be named Citation Laureates. The selection is based on data taken from the Web of Science Core Collection, which includes indexed contents of more than 34,000 scientific journals and other source materials.

In particular, papers cited more than 1000 times are rarities, representing the 0.05% of scientific output which is changing the course of scientific research in a fundamental way. From the already elite circle of authors of such extremely highly cited papers, Citation Laureates are selected based on whose research is highly likely to have a lasting impact and who are therefore 'of Nobel class' calibre candidates.

Among the Citation Laureates 2021 are Jean-Pierre Changeux (Physiology or Medicine: "for contributions to our understanding of neuroreceptors and especially the identification of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor and its allosteric properties");Tadamitsu Kishimoto (Physiology of Medicine: "for discovery of Interleukin-6, description of its physiological and pathological actions, that has contributed to drug development"); Barry Halliwell (Chemistry: “For pioneering research in free-radical chemistry including the role of free radicals and antioxidants in human disease”); Giorgio Parisi (Physics: "ground-breaking discoveries in quantum-chromodynamics and in the study of complex disordered systems").

We extend our congratulations to these distinguished researchers and former authors in MDPI journals, as well as to the twelve other Citation Laureates 2021!

Jean-Pierre Changeux (left image) is Professor Emeritus at Collège de France and the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France, and the Kavli Institute for Brain & Mind at the University of California San Diego, USA. Professor Changeux published an article with Biomolecules in 2020: “Discovery of the First Neurotransmitter Receptor: The Acetylcholine Nicotinic Receptor”.

Tadamitsu Kishimoto is Professor at the Laboratory of Immune Regulation, WPI Immunology Frontier Research Center, Osaka University, Japan. Professor Kishimoto guest edited a Special Issue in IJMS (with Prof. Masashi Narazaki) on "Interleukins in Health and Disease", in which they published a comprehensive review paper: "The Two-Faced Cytokine IL-6 in Host Defense and Diseases".

Barry Halliwell is a Distinguished Professor at the Department of Biochemistry, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS) and Senior Advisor to the Office of the Senior Deputy President and Provost at NUS. Within the early stages of the global COVID-19 pandemic in July 2020, Professor Halliwell co-authored a paper in Antioxidants, entitled “Could Ergothioneine Aid in the Treatment of Coronavirus Patients?”.

Giorgio Parisi is Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics, University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy. Among his distinguished list of publications is an article published in Entropy (with Juan J. Ruiz-Lorenzo et al.): “Spin Glasses in a Field Show a Phase Transition Varying the Distance among Real Replicas (And How to Exploit It to Find the Critical Line in a Field)”.

Citation Laureates 2021 from left to right: Prof. Jean-Pierre Changeux, Prof. Tadamitsu Kishimoto, Prof. Barry Halliwell and Prof. Giorgio Parisi.