Penza State University researchers Yuri Smirnov and Dmitry Valovik have been included in the annual ranking of the world's best scientists according to Stanford University. The ranking is compiled by John Ioannidis's group. The annual ranking takes into account citations for 2023, and it also publishes a version with the researchers' results over their entire careers.

The ranking gives preference not to the most productive scientists in terms of the number of publications, but to the most cited ones, that is, significant in their study fields. The number of co-authors in each article and the position of the researcher in the author's group are taken into account: first, second, last author. Self-citations are excluded from the basic ranking indicators.

The updated ranking for 2023 includes more than 200 thousand researchers from all over the world. Among them are Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor, Head of the Department of Mathematics and Supercomputer Simulation Yuri Smirnov (in the field of networks and telecommunications) and Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Mathematics and Supercomputer Simulation, Dmitry Valovik (in the field of networks and telecommunications). According to the ranking, PSU representatives are among the 1000 best Russian scientists.

The ranking database has been under development since 2015 and was first published in 2019 and is publicly available. According to the creators of the ranking, they aim to provide rigorous, accurate and transparent metrics of scientists' success and performance, thereby responding to the tendency to incorrectly use such indicators.