The 2025 Research magazine showcases Australia’s best

The Australian’s 2025 Research magazine delves deep to discover the richness of Australia’s research and shine a light on its unsung heroes

Each year The Australian’s Research magazine names the top researcher and the top research institution in 250 fields of research.

Welcome to The Australian’s 2025 Research magazine which, every year since 2018, has presented a comprehensive picture of Australia’s best research – naming the top performers in each of 250 fields across eight disciplines.

When we started doing this in 2018 it was a revolutionary approach, using big-data techniques to analyse the massive trove of publicly available data about researchers and their work, and offering fine-grained information about the top individual researcher, and the top university or research organisation, in each of the 250 fields.

Now in their seventh iteration, these lists are anticipated and expected within the research community each year. Gratifyingly, we’ve noticed that an appearance in the lists has become something researchers and institutions take pride in and want to share.

Because the lists are so fine-grained they are able to delve deep into research disciplines and give wider recognition to work that would otherwise be known only to a researcher’s peers. In this way the Research magazine, and its listings, are a valuable showcase for Australian research. They demonstrate the intrinsic value of research, and also its importance to the wider community by improving health, wellbeing, the environment and the economy.

The data in the magazine is prepared by talent discovery and research analytics firm League of Scholars using the skills of the co-founders, Paul McCarthy and Rasika Amarasiri. It was their insights into what was possible to discover by sifting the vast amounts of data available online which led to the first list of top 250 researchers and research institutions being created in 2018. They have repeated their work each year since, using an “impact score” that takes into account the quality of research.

We use publicly available information on Google Scholar to identify researchers, to obtain data on their citations and to link their work with universities and research institutions.

Using this data, every Australian researcher and every Australian university or research organisation is assigned an “impact score” in all 250 fields of research. This score is equal to the number of citations for papers published (by the individual or the institution) in the top 20 journals of each particular field in the past five years. This ensures that only quality work, and recent work, is considered. The researcher and the institution with the top score is the leader of the field.

Paul and Rasika have not limited their data analysis to creating the top 250 list. Thanks to their work, this year we are also publishing a list of universities whose research is growing the fastest in quality and quantity, a list of young rising stars to highlight Australia’s emerging research talent, and an innovative look at the flow of research talent in and out of Australia. We also honour the researchers and research institutions that are not only the best in Australia in a research field, but are the best in the world.

We hope you enjoy reading the 2025 Research magazine and we welcome your feedback.

Tim Dodd ([e-mail]), is the editor of the Research 2025 magazine.

Paul McCarthy ([e-mail]), is CEO and co-founder of League of Scholars.