On April 14, 2022, Elsevier released 2021 Highly Cited Chinese Researchers list. Seven professors from the School of Electrical Engineering, Jiang Xingliang, Liao Ruijin, Li Hui, Li Jian, Li Wenyuan, Sima Wenxia and Zeng Zheng, were included in the list.

The 2021 Elsevier Highly Cited Chinese Researchers list used Scopus, the world's authoritative citation and index database, as the statistical source of Chinese scholars' scientific research achievements, and adopted the method developed by Shanghai Ranking Consultancy to analyze the performance of Chinese scholars' scientific research achievements, finally selecting 4701 Chinese scholars with the most global influence in various disciplines.

In 2021, this list covered 84 first-class disciplines in 10 disciplines of the Ministry of Education. This time, the basic data extraction of Highly Cited Chinese Researchers used the further optimized and updated first-class discipline classification mapping of Elsevier Ministry of Education (covering 111 disciplines). This article-level mapping makes the data of Chinese scholars’ contribution and performance in disciplines more intuitively, shows the academic research ecology in line with China’s discipline setting, describes the scientific research output of Chinese scholars, and provides effective help for further combing and analyzing the citation performance of scholars.