literature - Top authors in a field

I'd like to write down a list of the top authors in my field in order to keep up to date with literature. Can anybody suggest any systematic approach to build such a list?

Answer

Disclaimer: I am definitely no expert in research, but let me just share with you how I do it.

I do it largely by the help of Google Scholar (Hoo-ray for Google!). In order to make it sound "systematic", I phrase my way in two steps and an extra optional step.

1. Step 1: Obtain the name list of the top authors in the field of interest from Google Scholar. Since many researchers, especially in the filed of EECS, use Google Scholar, and they usually list their "research interests" in the form of tags (e.g., machine learning), we can view the authors conveniently by research interest. For example, see the results here for the top authors in the field of machine learning. You will notice that the list is automatically sorted in descending order in terms of citations.


2. Step 2: Stay tuned for new papers by these authors with the help of Google Email Alerts. Once you have browsed through the top author list, you should have shortlisted several most interested authors. To receive an email notification when they have new papers available online, simple click Follow on the right side of their names. Voila! You will receive an email every time they have new research published from now on!


3. Optional Step: Another thing I also do every year on top of the previous two points is to skim through this year's proceedings of the famous conference/journals in the field. This way, you may get a sense of what is hot these days.