Leading researchers in the leadership of leading research universities: Meta-research analysis

It is unknown to what extent leading researchers are currently involved in the leadership of leading research universities as presidents or as executive board members. The academic administrative leader (president or equivalent role) of each of the 146 Carnegie tier 1 USA universities and of any of the top-100 universities per Times Higher Education (THE) 2024 ranking and the members of the executive governing bodies (Board of Trustees, Council, Corporation or similar) for the each of the top-20 universities per THE 2024 ranking were examined for high citation impact in their scientific subfield. Highly-cited was defined as the top-2 % of a composite citation indicator (that considers citations, h-index, co-authorship adjusted hm-index and citations to papers as single, first, last authors) in their main scientific subfield based on career-long impact until end-2022 among all scholars focusing in the same subfield and having published ≥5 full papers. Very highly-cited was similarly defined as the top-0.2 %. Science was divided into 174 fields per Science-Metrix classification. 38/146 (26 %) tier 1 USA university leaders as of end-2023 were highly-cited and 5/146 (3 %) were very highly-cited. The respective figures for the top-100 THE 2024 universities globally were 43/100 and 12/100. For the 13 US universities among the top-20 of THE 2024, the probability of their leader being highly-cited was lower (6/13, 46 %) than the probability of a randomly chosen active full tenured professor from their faculty being highly-cited (52–77 %). Across 444 board members of 14 top-10 THE 2024 universities with data, only 65 (15 %) were academics, and 19 (4 %) were highly-cited; academics were rare in USA university boards. Board members had predominantly careers in for-profit companies. In conclusion, leading research universities have a dearth of leaders who are high-impact researchers.