Susan Herring, professor of information science at the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, ranks among the world’s most influential scientists.
Herring was included in Stanford University’s 2023 global career-impact list, which showcases the world’s top two percent of scientists in various disciplines. It reflects significant contributions over a long period of time, as well as making a major impact in a chosen field.
“I am extremely pleased Susan was ranked among the 2023 Stanford University top two-percent of scientists,” said Noriko Hara, professor of information science and chair of the Department of Information and Library Science. “She is an amazing researcher.”
Herring is known for her ground-breaking research in computer-mediated communication, which focuses on how people communicate through digital technologies such as social media, email, and instant messaging. Major contributions include analyzing the language used in online communication and the social impacts of technology on communication. Her work has produced key insight into how people communicate in digital contexts.
In the 1990s, she conducted some of the earliest studies on gender differences in online communication, challenging the assumption it was gender neutral, and establishing the importance of gender as a variable in the study of computer-mediated communication.
Herring’s work also targets conceptualization of computer-mediated discourse, and developing a framework to establish a common vocabulary for analyzing online discourse. She has conducted extensive research on online communities and graphical computer-mediated communication. She’s been at the forefront of research on graphicons, graphical icons such as emoji, stickers and video filters that transform a user’s appearance. This research has identified emerging practices in the use of graphicons across cultural contexts.
Herring is the current editor-in-chief of Language@Internet, and has served as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. She has edited several highly cited volumes of computer-mediated communication research.
Herring has published more than 150 articles and book chapters, many widely cited and recognized as seminal contributions. Her work has appeared in top-tier academic journals and has been cited more than 34,000 times. Previous honors include the prestigious ASIST Research Award and a CASBS Fellowship.
“Being included in the 2023 Stanford University list is a significant honor,” Herring said, “and a recognition of my decades of dedication to the field of computer-mediated communication. I feel proud, validated, and motivated to continue my research with renewed enthusiasm.”
Scientists make the Stanford University list based on a comprehensive analysis of research impact across 176 scientific fields. Those include the number of citations, the h-index which reflects the productivity and impact of a researcher’s work, the number of publications listed as a co-author, the number of publications a researcher has produced, the number of publications listed in the top 10 percent of the most-cited journals, and the specific research area.
Data are obtained from the Scopus database, a comprehensive database of peer-review publications. The result is a composite citation score. Herring’s lifetime score is 17,066 out of the 194,984 scientists who made the list.