Seven academics of the University of Peradeniya have been ranked among the top 2% of researchers of the world according to a journal article published in PLOS Biology by a group of researchers from the Stanford University, USA. Among all Sri Lankan universities, Peradeniya University is proud of having the highest number of academics ranked amongst the top 2%.

According to the journal article authored by Ioannidis et al. (2020) https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3000918, researchers have been evaluated under two categories: career-long citation impact and the citation impact in the year 2019. The composite indicator has been developed by the authors based on Scopus eliminating self citations using h index, hm index, total citations, total cites in single-authored papers, total cites in first-authored papers etc. The aforesaid authors have filtered out as the top 2% of the researchers amongst all researchers in the world who have published at least five papers in their career. These databasescarrying information of more than 161 researchers are freely availableviaMendeleyhttps://dx.doi.org/10.17632/btchxktzyw.

According to the two databases, seven academics in total from University of Peradeniya have been identified to be within the top 2% of researchers in the world.Table 1 provides a ranking based on career-long citation impact until the end of 2019, and Table 2 provides a ranking based on the citation impact in the year 2019.Accordingly, the tables 1 and 2 list the top 2% of researchers from University of Peradeniya.

Table 1. Researchers from the University of Peradeniya listedbased on theircareer-long citation impact until the end of 2019.

Researcher	Field	Sub Field	From - To	No of Articles	World Rank
Prof. J.B. Ekanayake	Engineering	Networking & Telecommunications	1994 - 2020	154	75,290
Prof. N. Senanayake	Medicine	General & Internal Medicine	1972 - 2014	77/td>	108,070
Prof. C.B. Dissanayake	Science	Environmental Sciences	1972 - 2020	135	153,904
Prof. S.A.M. Kularatne	Medicine	General & Internal Medicine	1993 - 2020	101	176,972
Dr. S.A.H.A. Suraweera	Engineering	Networking & Telecommunications	2004 - 2020	79	237,102

Table 2. Researchers of the University of Peradeniya listed based on their citation impact in the calendar year 2019.

Researcher	Field	Sub Field	From - To	No of Articles	World Rank
Prof. J.B. Ekanayake	Engineering	Networking & Telecommunications	1994-2020	154	56,888
Prof. S.A.M. Kularatn	Medicine	General & Internal Medicine	1993-2020	101	110,055
Prof. C.B. Dissanayake	Science	Environmental Sciences	1972-2020	135	112,224
Dr.R.P.N.P.Rajapakse	Agriculture	Medicinal & Biomolecular Chemistry	2005-2014	25	216,268
Dr. S.A.H.A. Suraweera	Engineering	Networking & Telecommunications	2004-2020	79	222,915
Dr. B.E.P. Mendis	Agriculture	Medicinal & Biomolecular Chemistry	2005-2014	29	253,208