Excellence Across Generations: How University of Michigan Social Work Faculty Rank Among the World’s Most Influential Scholars
What happens when you measure interdisciplinary scholarship through single-discipline lenses?
Eighteen faculty members from the University of Michigan School of Social Work—14 current faculty and 4 emeriti—appear in the Elsevier data repository (available HERE) of the world’s most highly cited scholars. The current faculty represent 27.5% of the school’s tenure-track faculty, with three ranking in the top 50,000 worldwide—the top 0.02% of all researchers globally. Seven appear in both career-long and single-year citation datasets, demonstrating sustained historical influence and ongoing contemporary relevance. The four emeriti, all appearing in the career-long dataset, extend this legacy of excellence, showing how the School’s scholarly influence spans generations.
These rankings come from the updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators created by Stanford professor John P.A. Ioannidis and colleagues (2025), which has become the standard global metric for identifying influential researchers based on Scopus citation data. The numbers tell a story of scholarly excellence across decades. They also reveal the challenge of measuring interdisciplinary impact through systems designed for traditional academic boundaries.
The Measurement System: Two Windows into Scholarly Impact
This database has become academia’s de facto global ranking system, identifying the top 2% of researchers worldwide through standardized citation metrics derived exclusively from Scopus data (Ioannidis et al., 2025). The August 2025 release analyzes Scopus citations through December 2024, organizing approximately 9.5 million scientists into 174 research subfields.
A critical distinction between Scopus and Google Scholar. Scopus indexes approximately 27,000 peer-reviewed journals with rigorous selection criteria, while Google Scholar casts a wider net, including preprints, theses, conference papers, and institutional repositories. A scholar might have 5,000 Google Scholar citations but only 2,000 Scopus citations for the same body of work. The Ioannidis database uses only Scopus data, prioritizing quality-controlled, peer-reviewed publications over comprehensive coverage.
The database creates two distinct snapshots of scholarly influence:
Career-Long Impact (1960-2024): This dataset tracks the accumulated lifetime Scopus citations, identifying scholars whose work has significantly shaped their fields over time. Inclusion requires either ranking among the top 100,000 researchers globally or achieving top 2% status within one’s specific subfield based on total career citations in Scopus-indexed journals. This measure favors established scholars whose foundational work continues to accumulate citations years or decades after publication.
Single-Year Impact (2024 only): This dataset identifies researchers whose work is currently being actively cited in Scopus-indexed venues. Using only citations received during 2024 from journals in the Scopus database, it captures contemporary relevance and emerging influence. Early-career scholars with breakthrough research or established scholars addressing current debates can achieve high single-year rankings even without extensive career citations.
These dual perspectives reveal different dimensions of scholarly influence. A scholar might appear in both categories (indicating sustained historical impact and ongoing relevance), only in the career-long category (suggesting foundational contributions that remain influential), or only in the single-year category (indicating emerging impact or renewed relevance).
The system addresses a fundamental challenge: citation patterns vary dramatically across disciplines. The 90th percentile for career citations in Scopus ranges from 83 in Visual Arts to 1,769 in Biomedical Research. Without field-specific adjustment, humanities and social science scholars would face systematic disadvantage.
Yet this solution creates new problems. The database assigns scholars to disciplines based solely on where they publish most frequently within Scopus-indexed journals. A researcher publishing 40% in social work journals, 30% in public health, and 30% in psychology gets classified as “social work”—then competes against specialists publishing exclusively in that field. This journal-based identity becomes particularly problematic for interdisciplinary fields such as social work, where research naturally spans multiple domains.
Finding Social Work in a Global Database
Identifying the School of Social Work faculty required navigating these classification challenges. I extracted all 2,540 University of Michigan researchers from the database, then matched them against 51 current School of Social Work faculty members. After accounting for name variations, institutional affiliations, and excluding false matches, I confirmed 14 faculty members in the highly cited database. A separate analysis of emeriti faculty yielded 4 additional highly cited scholars.
Among current faculty, only three of these 14 scholars are classified as “Social Work” researchers in the Scopus-based system: Terri Friedline, Joseph Ryan, and Shanna Kattari. The remaining eleven are distributed across Criminology (4), Gerontology (4), Oncology & Carcinogenesis (2), and Developmental Psychology (1).
The emeriti faculty follow a similar pattern: only one of four (Lorraine Gutiérrez) is classified in Social Work, while the others appear in Criminology (2: Daniel Saunders and Kathleen Coulborn Faller) and Urban & Regional Planning (1: Barry Checkoway).
Across both generations, only 4 of 18 highly cited social work faculty (22%) are classified as social work scholars. This distribution reflects not misclassification but rather the reality of where social work scholarship appears in Scopus-indexed literature—and the limitations of using journal venues as disciplinary markers.
Three Patterns of Scholarly Impact
The database’s dual temporal perspectives reveal three distinct trajectories of influence among the 18 highly cited faculty:
Sustained Excellence Across Time (Both Datasets)
Seven faculty appear in both the career-long (1960-2024) and single-year (2024) rankings, a rare achievement indicating both accumulated historical influence and active contemporary engagement with their work:
Bradley Zebrack (Career Rank: 22,250, Scopus H-Index: 58; 2024 Rank: 15,081) leads the school’s representation. His psychosocial oncology research, particularly on adolescent and young adult cancer survivors, has shaped both historical understanding and current practice. His higher single-year ranking indicates accelerating influence as his earlier work gains renewed relevance.
Linda Chatters (Career: 35,401, H-Index: 55; 2024: 37,008) and Robert Joseph Taylor (Career: 44,389, H-Index: 58; 2024: 72,301) have made significant contributions to the scholarship on African American aging, religion, and social support networks. Their consistent presence in both datasets reflects sustained productivity—their foundational work continues to be cited, while they produce new research that engages current debates.
Richard Tolman (Career: 71,675, H-Index: 39; 2024: 82,627) has significantly contributed to the understanding of intimate partner violence interventions over the course of several decades. Lydia Li (Career: 175,928, H-Index: 27; 2024: 176,319) addresses social isolation and ageism among older adults with remarkably consistent impact across both timeframes.
Shanna Kattari exhibits the largest trajectory shift, ranking 194,581 for career citations (H-Index: 29), but 32,781 for 2024 alone (H-Index: 13 for that single year). This represents a six-fold improvement in relative position between the career-long and single-year rankings. Their research focuses on LGBTQ+ health disparities, disability justice, and the intersection of marginalized identities in healthcare access.
Katie Edwards (Career: 91,029, H-Index: 33; 2024: 16,555) demonstrates exceptional contemporary influence, ranking in the top 8% of highly cited scholars for 2024. Her research on adolescent dating violence, teen relationship abuse, and bystander intervention programs has gained significant traction. The database lists her affiliation as University of Nebraska-Lincoln, reflecting her recent move to Michigan’s School of Social Work.
Foundational Contributions (Career-Long Dataset Only)
Six scholars appear only in career-long rankings, indicating established influence from foundational work that continues to shape their fields even if recent citation rates have moderated. This group includes two current faculty and all four emeriti:
Current Faculty:
Todd Herrenkohl (Career: 99,575, H-Index: 45) has built influence through longitudinal studies of child maltreatment and resilience. His contributions reflects an arc of foundational research that becomes absorbed into disciplinary knowledge.
Joseph Ryan (Career: 222,270, H-Index: 26) has shaped child welfare scholarship through work on foster care outcomes, trauma, and substance abuse. His career-long recognition acknowledges the accumulated impact of research that has become integral to the field.
Emeriti Faculty:
Daniel Saunders (Career: 63,214, H-Index: 28), the highest-ranked emeritus, established one of the first intervention programs for men who batter in the 1970s. His research on judicial decision-making in domestic violence cases continues to influence contemporary practice and policy.
Barry Checkoway (Career: 108,284, H-Index: 22), Arthur Dunham Collegiate Professor Emeritus, created frameworks for youth empowerment and participatory research that remain foundational to community-engaged scholarship.
Kathleen Coulborn Faller (Career: 112,762, H-Index: 24) revolutionized child protection through forensic interviewing protocols that shaped national standards for interviewing children suspected of sexual abuse.
Lorraine Gutiérrez (Career: 170,013, H-Index: 22) developed theoretical and practice frameworks for multicultural social work and empowerment that continue to guide work with communities of color.
The presence of all four emeriti in this category is expected—their most impactful scholarly work occurred earlier in their careers, and their continued presence in the career-long dataset demonstrates the enduring influence of their foundational contributions.
Contemporary Influence (2024 Dataset Only)
Five faculty appear only in the single-year 2024 rankings, indicating either emerging scholars whose recent work generates exceptional interest or established researchers experiencing renewed relevance:
Kathryn Maguire-Jack (2024: 53,388, H-Index: 13) examines neighborhood conditions and child maltreatment prevention—research particularly relevant to current policy debates about community-level interventions. Xiaoling Xiang (2024: 79,811, H-Index: 10) develops digital health interventions for homebound older adults, addressing challenges highlighted by the pandemic. Lisa Fedina (2024: 104,445, H-Index: 9) addresses gender-based violence and marginalized populations during a period of heightened attention to these issues.
Terri Friedline (2024: 119,058, H-Index: 7) challenges conventional financial inclusion narratives at a time of growing interest in economic justice. Anao Zhang (2024: 201,471, H-Index: 9) advances LGBTQ+ reproductive health equity in cancer care, emerging research addressing previously overlooked populations.
The exclusive appearance of these scholars in the 2024 dataset suggests work that directly addresses contemporary challenges, generating immediate engagement from the research community in Scopus-indexed journals.
Note: All H-indices represent Scopus metrics only and would typically be higher in Google Scholar, which includes citations from dissertations, preprints, and other non-peer-reviewed sources.
What These Numbers Miss
Several accomplished scholars may be absent through no reflection on their work’s quality or impact:
Scopus Coverage Limitations: The database relies exclusively on Scopus indexing, which covers approximately 27,000 journals compared to Google Scholar’s broader scope. Many specialized social work journals, particularly those with a regional focus or newer open-access venues, may not be indexed in Scopus. A scholar with 3,000 Google Scholar citations might have only 1,500 Scopus citations from the same publications.
Interdisciplinary Penalties: Scholars distributing publications across multiple fields face structural disadvantages. The system compares their subset of field-specific publications against the complete portfolios of specialists within Scopus-indexed venues.
Venue Limitations: Work published outside the Science-Metrix classification, which encompasses approximately 30,000 journals, does not contribute to these metrics, even if indexed in Scopus. This is particularly true for emerging interdisciplinary areas that lack established journal hierarchies.
Career Stage Effects: Early-career faculty, regardless of research quality, require years to accumulate competitive citation counts in Scopus-indexed journals. The five-paper minimum for inclusion further disadvantages emerging scholars.
Community-Engaged Scholarship: Research prioritizing community impact over academic citations, often central to social work’s mission, may be systematically undervalued. Policy briefs, community reports, and practice guidelines rarely appear in Scopus-indexed venues.
Author Disambiguation Issues: Despite achieving 98.1% precision in Scopus author profiles, some scholars have work split across multiple profiles or merged with namesakes, which affects the accuracy of citation counts.
Implications for Academic Evaluation
This analysis reveals both achievement and systemic challenge. The University of Michigan School of Social Work has produced scholarship influential enough to rank among the world’s top researchers across multiple generations, even when measured by systems not designed for interdisciplinary fields. The concentration in criminology (6 total: 4 current, 2 emeriti) and gerontology (4 current), along with representation across multiple disciplines, demonstrates both specialized excellence and multidisciplinary reach that has been sustained over decades.
Yet the classification patterns raise fundamental questions. When only 4 of 18 highly cited social work faculty (22%) are classified as social work scholars, we must consider whether the measurement systems align with the reality of knowledge production. The database’s journal-based taxonomy, designed for fields with clear disciplinary boundaries, struggles to capture scholarship that intentionally bridges domains.
These limitations do not diminish the achievements documented in this post. Instead, they suggest that the true impact of interdisciplinary scholarship may be even greater than current metrics capture. As universities increasingly emphasize multidisciplinary research to address complex social challenges, our evaluation systems must evolve accordingly.
Moving Forward: Toward Better Measurement
The Ioannidis database offers valuable insights into citation impact within specific contexts. However, its prominence in academic evaluation demands critical engagement with its limitations. For fields such as social work, which are inherently interdisciplinary, community-engaged, and oriented toward social impact, traditional bibliometric approaches capture only part of the story.
Future evaluation systems might consider:
Classification based on intellectual approach rather than publication venue
Metrics that account for interdisciplinary distribution rather than penalizing it
Recognition of diverse impact pathways beyond academic citations
Evaluation frameworks designed for, rather than adapted to, interdisciplinary scholarship
The 18 faculty members identified here—14 current and 4 emeriti—have achieved remarkable scholarly influence by any measure. Their success despite systemic barriers designed for other disciplines makes their achievement even more noteworthy. The presence of both current faculty shaping contemporary debates and emeriti whose foundational work continues to influence their fields decades later demonstrates the School’s sustained commitment to research excellence across generations.
Data Source
Ioannidis, John P.A., et al. (2025). “Updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators.” August 2025 data-update. Elsevier Data Repository, Version 8. https://elsevier.digitalcommonsdata.com/datasets/btchxktzyw/8