Maxim Yurkin, Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Senior Researcher at the V.V. Voyevodsky Institute of Chemical Kinetics and Combustion (IHCG) SB RAS and, senior lecturer in Biomedical Physics Section at the NSU Physics Department was recognized twice as the best reviewer of the year on the Publons website. Yurkin is also the leader in Russia for the number of confirmed reviews.
Publons, a free service for scientists around the world, was launched in 2012. It is currently part of the Clarivate Analytics Company that also owns the well-known "Web of Science" database. Publons allows any registered researcher to independently confirm their activities as a reviewer and editor for any of the world's journals (without violating the anonymity of peer review). All data is displayed in a summarized form in the scientist's profile and can be used as evidence of the status and influence of the researcher in his field.
Maxim Yurkin described his experience with Publons:
— I registered with Publons during its first year and immediately became a leader in the number of reviews because I was able to confirm reviews since 2007, the very beginning of my career as a reviewer. At the time, Publons was not well known so there was no recognition of me as one of the top 10% of reviewers in 2016. During the last year, everything has radically changed. Publons became better known and started to cooperate directly with journals and increased its number of users by an order of magnitude, and became recognized as representing the world landscape of reviews. Competition has become much tougher, so entering 1% of the best reviewers in my field is a great honor for me. This is also a great success because I do not spend more than 10% of my time on reviews, only 19 reviews a year, so it's hard for me to compete with those who have more than 100 .
Maxim Yurkin works on developing a method for discrete dipoles. On the basis of this, the scientist developed a universal computer program ADDA. One of the applications for this program is the simulation of light scattering by biological cells (in particular, human blood cells and bacteria). The program significantly exceeds foreign analogues in terms of speed and other parameters. Yurkin's developments are used throughout the world to study and diagnose various objects: interstellar dust, aerosols and hail in the atmosphere, inhomogeneous coatings on paper, metallic nanoparticles and much more.
