KUALA LUMPUR — Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) Professor of International Relations, Dr Kuik Cheng Chwee, has been listed in the “Annual Impact Ranking,” making him the only Malaysian scholar in the field of International Relations included in the 2025 edition of the World’s Top 2% Scientists list.
This marks the third consecutive year he has been featured in the list, which is compiled by Stanford University in the United States in collaboration with leading academic publisher Elsevier.
According to the sm-subfield-1 (ns) data ranking, 190 scholars in the subfield of International Relations were selected for the “Annual Impact Ranking,” of whom 21 are from Asian institutions. Kuik was ranked 14th among them.
Currently a visiting scholar at Kyoto University in Japan, Kuik has in recent years been recognised as a leading figure in the study of Hedging Theory in International Relations, as well as an academic leader in international strategy and development cooperation in Southeast Asia.
His research spans the alignment behaviour of small states, regional multilateralism, East Asian security, China–ASEAN relations and Malaysia’s foreign policy.
Previously, he served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Princeton–Harvard “China and the World Program” (CWP), and as a Visiting Researcher at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford.
The World’s Top 2% Scientists list is based on citation data analysis from the Scopus database, assessed using six key metrics: total citations, the H Hirsch Index, the Hm Schreiber Index (adjusted for co-authorship), as well as citations 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, identifying the top 2% out of nearly seven million scientists worldwide.
The list is divided into two categories: the “Annual Scientific Impact Ranking,” which highlights academic achievements in 2024, and the “Career-long Scientific Impact Ranking,” which reflects overall impact throughout a scientist’s career.
As a global benchmark for research performance, the list provides an objective measure of scientists’ influence and their contributions to their respective fields. — September 27, 2025