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The data above were extracted from the Essential Science Indicators database of Thomson Reuters. This database, covering the period January 2000 to August 2010, surveys only journal articles (original research reports and review articles) indexed by Thomson Reuters. Articles are assigned to a category based on the journals in which they were published and the Thomson Reuters journal-to-field classification scheme. Both articles tabulated and citation counts are for the period indicated. Institutions publishing large numbers of papers have a greater likelihood of collecting more citations. This ranking is by citations per paper (impact) for European universities that published 1,000 or more papers in engineering during the period. For papers with multiple institutional addresses, each university receives full, not fractional, publication and citation credit.

Essential Science Indicators lists institutions ranked in the top 1 per cent for a field over a given period, based on total citations. For the current version, 1,095 institutions are listed in the field of engineering, meaning that a total of 109,500 institutions were surveyed to obtain these results. Of the 1,095 institutions, 240 published 1,000 or more papers. The ranking by citation impact seeks to reveal heavy hitters based on per-paper influence, not mere output or total citations. The average impact in engineering for the period was 4.60.

Also appearing is the world rank by impact for each of these European universities.

Noteworthy is the high ranking of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (EPFL and ETH), with European rankings of first and ninth, and world rankings of 14 and 40. The UK is well represented by six institutions among the European top 20. Altogether, 10 European Union nations have one or more universities in this ranking. As of 2009, the EU held a 33 per cent world share in engineering. Nations in the Asia Pacific region tallied a 39 per cent share and the US a 21 per cent share, down significantly from some 38 per cent three decades ago. While the EU nations held a fairly steady world share over the past 30 years, Asia Pacific nations increased markedly from only 16 per cent in 1981. The Asia Pacific output in engineering surpassed the US in 2000 and overtook the EU in 2005. China alone now holds a 15 per cent world share, up from just 0.5 per cent in 1981. China will likely exceed the US in 2012 in its output of engineering papers indexed by Thomson Reuters. Currently, the relative citation impact scores for the US, the EU, China and the Asia Pacific nations are, respectively, 25 per cent above, 5 per cent above, 6 per cent below and 9 per cent below the world average. Engineering papers from China and the Asia Pacific region are, thus, beginning to challenge those of the EU in their average influence as reflected by citations. The best of Asian papers, of course, exceed the world average.

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