By analysing citation patterns, Clarivate Analytics (Thomson Reuters as was), cooperating with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, identifies what’s hot now and heating up in research.

“By tracking the world’s most significant scientific and scholarly literature and the patterns and groupings of how papers are cited—in particular, clusters of papers that are frequently cited together, “research fronts” can be discovered. … Research front data reveal links among researchers working on related threads of scientific inquiry, even if the researchers’ backgrounds might not suggest that they belong to the same “invisible college,” their new 2018 report states.

It identifies 100 research areas across the sciences that are hot now and 38 that are emerging.

Australia rates as a research leader producing either/and “core” and “citing” papers in 11 disciplines. Australian institutions world ranks are;

* ninth in research into plant rhizosphere microbial communities

* second in oxidation technology to remove water pollutants. Shaobin Wang’s research group makes Curtin U the world’s top institution for papers

* eighth for work on antibiotic resistance genes

* = seventh for mineralogy of the Martian crust

* seventh in intensive blood pressure control

* tenth for papers on cell mutation in Alzheimer’s Disease

* eighth for gut microbiota impact on brain and behaviour

* eighth for the origin and evolution of the universe revealed in cosmic rays, gamma rays and neutrinos

* sixth for multiple access technology for 5G mobile networks

* = sixth for work on smart card and biometric authentication. La Trobe U is the tenth institution in the world for core papers

* = second for core papers on management research with big data. The University of Wollongong ranks first in the world for three core papers