Safa Jafari, Office of Communications, communications@aub.edu.lb
Dr. Elie Akl, tenured professor of medicine and vice provost for research at the American University of Beirut (AUB), is on the 2025 edition of the international Clarivate's Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list for the 10th consecutive year. This marks a distinguished achievement that underscores his global impact in health sciences and evidence-based medicine.
Dr. Akl is the only scholar from the Arab world to be listed in Clinical Medicine field and one of only two researchers from the region to appear in the Social Sciences category, which encompasses public health. His dual-field recognition places him in an exceptionally rare group of scholars worldwide who exert significant influence across both medical and social science research domains.
According to Clarivate, highly cited researchers “represent the top 1 in 1,000 of the world's scientists and social scientists," placing honorees in the top 0.1 percent by citation influence worldwide.
This year's HCR list includes 41 researchers from the Arab world, spanning seven countries: Egypt (1), Kuwait (1), Lebanon (1), Morocco (2), Qatar (2), Saudi Arabia (27), and the United Arab Emirates (7). Clarivate uses quantitative and qualitative metrics through a rigorous methodology that involves expert analysis and continuous adaptation for data integrity and accuracy. Approximately 2,400 researchers around the world who met the quantitative citation thresholds were excluded from the list after the company identified “anomalous publication and citation patterns."
All of the highly cited publications contributing to Dr. Akl's recognition over the past eleven years list AUB as his primary affiliation, underscoring the university's pivotal role in producing research of the highest international impact.
“I am very pleased to be included on this list once again," stated Dr. Akl. “I am particularly proud that, for the first time, this recognition is supported only by the research work I have done after joining AUB. I am very hopeful that many of my colleagues who appear on the Stanford list of the world's two percent most cited scientists will join the Clarivate list in the near future."
With close to 600 peer-reviewed publications, Vice Provost Akl is widely recognized for his scholarship in health research methodology, conflicts of interest, evidence synthesis, and practice guideline development. Globally, he is as member of the Executive Committee of the GRADE Working Group, the Board of Trustees of the Guidelines International Network (GIN), and the WHO Advisory Panel on the International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP), and he co-chairs the WHO Expert Advisory Panel on Drug Evaluation.
AUB's continued presence on the Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers list affirms the university's longstanding commitment to research excellence, integrity, and impact. Dr. Akl's achievements exemplify AUB's role as a leading hub of scientific advancement in the Arab world and an active contributor to global knowledge creation and dissemination.