PETALNG JAYA: UKM professor Prof Kuik Cheng Chwee is listed in the “Annual Impact Ranking,” making him the only Malaysian scholar in the subfield of International Relations to be included in the annual list of 2025 World’s Top 2% Scientists List.

This marks the third consecutive year that he is in the list released by Stanford University in United States and renowned academic publisher Elsevier.

According to the rank sm-subfield-1 (ns) data statistics, a total of 190 scholars in the subfield of International Relations were selected for the “Annual Impact Ranking,” with 21 scholars from Asian institutions.

Among them, Kuik is ranked 14th.

Currently a visiting scholar at Kyoto University in Japan, Kuik is recognised as a leading figure in the study of Hedging Theory within International Relations in recent years, and an academic leader in international strategy and development cooperation in Southeast Asia.

His research areas include the alignment behaviour of weaker states, regional multilateralism, East Asian security, China-ASEAN relations, and Malaysia’s foreign policy.

He has previously served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Princeton-Harvard “China and the World Program” (CWP), as well as a Visiting Researcher at the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford University.

The “World’s Top 2% Scientists List” is based on an analysis of citation data from the Scopus database, evaluated using six key metrics: total citations, Hirsch H-index, Schreiber Hm-index (adjusted for co-authorship), and citation counts for single-authored papers, single or first-authored papers, and single, first or last-authored papers.

The evaluation covers 22 scientific fields and 176 subfields, selecting the top 2 percent of nearly 7 million scientists worldwide.

The list is divided into the “Annual Scientific Impact Ranking” and the “Career-long Scientific Impact Ranking.”

The former focuses on academic achievements in the year 2024, while the latter highlights the overall impact of a scientist’s career to date.

As a benchmark for assessing research performance, the list objectively and accurately reflects the global influence of scientists and their contributions to their respective fields.