People

Senior Research Fellow, RoRI and Senior Researcher, CWTS, Leiden University

Nees Jan van Eck is senior researcher and head of data science at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he leads data infrastructure projects and coordinates the Information & Openness focal area.

Drawing on extensive technical expertise and deep knowledge of diverse scientometric data sources and tools, Nees Jan focuses on studying and developing infrastructures, algorithms, and tools to support research assessment, science policy, and scholarly communication.

With a strong interest in transparent and democratic decision-making in science, he emphasizes the importance of open and equitable access to research information. Nees Jan is the architect and lead developer of the CWTS Leiden Ranking Open Edition, the first fully transparent worldwide university ranking based on open and reproducible data. He is also the developer of VOSviewer, a widely used software tool for analyzing and visualizing bibliometric data, which has been cited in more than 50,000 scientific publications.