Sweden stands out in new citation analysis of humanities

The 2025 Research Barometer does not contain citation statistics for the humanities. This is because citation levels in the field are too low to generate stable calculations of the standard metric ‘Share of highly cited publications’.

In the new analysis, we have used a different metric than in the Research Barometer: the share of publications with more than five citations. The data is based on publications included in the Web of Science database, which is only one third of Swedish publications in the humanities.

The results show that Sweden stands up very well internationally.

”Sweden's citation impact in 2023 was twice as high as the world average: 6.5 per cent of Swedish publications had more than five citations, compared with 3.3 per cent globally," says Karin Tegerstedt, analyst at the Swedish Research Council.

The Swedish universities that are largest in this field, in terms of publication volume, are Stockholm University, Uppsala University, Lund University and the University of Gothenburg. However, the citation impact of the universities needs to be interpreted with caution. For example, Linköping University has the highest share of publications with more than five citations, but this is influenced by the university's strong publication output in linguistics – a subject with generally higher citation rates.

”It is important for all fields to have statistics showing their impact. We have now implemented a model that is reliable for the field despite the limitations of the database. This will also allow Swedish humanities to be compared internationally," says Katarina Bjelke, Director general of the Swedish Research Council.

For the 2027 Research Barometer, a transition from Web of Science to OpenAlex is planned. The broader coverage in OpenAlex provides better opportunities to integrate the humanities into the regular citation analysis.

”With OpenAlex, we gain a more comprehensive picture of Swedish research. This is necessary for conducting more accurate analyses of the humanities, despite the field's varied publication and citation patterns,” says Karin Tegerstedt.

The supplement Citation Impact for the Humanities is published on the same page as the Research Barometer 2025