This text has been translated from Norwegian with the assistance of GPT UiO.
– I am very pleased with this ranking, says Vegard Skirbekk, who is a research director at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and also associated with the Department of Psychology at the University of Oslo.
Skirbekk is a versatile, productive and interdisciplinary researcher and research leader, both nationally and internationally. Fertility and health are among his research areas. Skirbekk also leads, among other projects, the HOMME research project, which examines health, cognition and employment among men.
Outstanding achievements across several different fields
The ScholarGPS Highly Ranked Scholar listing is based particularly on activity over the past five years, placing Skirbekk among the top 0.05 per cent of academics worldwide. A common factor among those at the top of the list is outstanding achievements across several different fields, disciplines and specialties.
The ranking is based on ScholarGPS’s algorithms and covers 14 broad research fields divided into 177 disciplines. In addition, the measurement draws on 350,000 niche specialities.
Vegard Skirbekk is frequently consulted as an expert in various media, both in Norway and internationally.
– I believe research that is not communicated is lost – if few or no people read about the results, unfortunately a great deal of time has been wasted, says the leading researcher.
He emphasises that reaching the top of research requires dedication.
– It takes many hours of effort. One must not believe that anything happens by itself. It is also important to be willing to accept that the evidence may support completely different conclusions from those you initially thought were important, he says.
Hopes to inspire other researchers
His recipe for having come so far is "to work broadly, interdisciplinarily and internationally".
– That opens up many opportunities and inspires new ideas and cross disciplinary collaborations, which in turn lead to better publications, says Skirbekk, who hopes to inspire other researchers and contribute to more funding for important research.
ScholarGPS is an American company that uses artificial intelligence, data mining, machine learning and other data science techniques on its enormous database of over 200 million publications and 3 billion citations to rank more than 30 million researchers and 120,000 institutions worldwide.