Win Cowger

3.3k total citations · 3 hit papers
32 papers, 1.7k citations indexed

About

Win Cowger is a scholar working on Pollution, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering and Environmental Engineering. According to data from OpenAlex, Win Cowger has authored 32 papers receiving a total of 1.7k indexed citations (citations by other indexed papers that have themselves been cited), including 27 papers in Pollution, 22 papers in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering and 4 papers in Environmental Engineering. Recurrent topics in Win Cowger's work include Microplastics and Plastic Pollution (27 papers), Recycling and Waste Management Techniques (22 papers) and Biosensors and Analytical Detection (4 papers). Win Cowger is often cited by papers focused on Microplastics and Plastic Pollution (27 papers), Recycling and Waste Management Techniques (22 papers) and Biosensors and Analytical Detection (4 papers). Win Cowger collaborates with scholars based in United States, Germany and Canada. Win Cowger's co-authors include Andrew B. Gray, Sebastian Primpke, Hannah De Frond, Chelsea M. Rochman, Keenan Munno, Hannah Hapich, Ashok D. Deshpande, George Sarau, Silke Christiansen and Marco Pittroff and has published in prestigious journals such as SHILAP Revista de lepidopterología, Environmental Science & Technology and PLoS ONE.

In The Last Decade

Win Cowger

30 papers receiving 1.6k citations

Hit Papers

Microplastic Spectral Cla... 2021 2026 2022 2024 2021 2023 2024 100 200 300
What are hit papers?

Hit papers significantly outperform the citation benchmark for their cohort. A paper qualifies if it has ≥500 total citations, achieves ≥1.5× the top-1% citation threshold for papers in the same subfield and year (this is the minimum needed to enter the top 1%, not the average within it), or reaches the top citation threshold in at least one of its specific research topics.

  1. Microplastic Spectral Classification Needs an Open Source Community: Open Specy to the Rescue!
    2021 355 citations Win Cowger, Zacharias Steinmetz et al. Analytical Chemistry profile →
  2. A growing plastic smog, now estimated to be over 170 trillion plastic particles afloat in the world’s oceans—Urgent solutions required
    2023 215 citations Marcus Eriksen, Win Cowger et al. PLoS ONE profile →
  3. Global producer responsibility for plastic pollution
    2024 71 citations Win Cowger, Kathryn Willis et al. Science Advances profile →

Author Peers

Peers are selected by citation overlap in the author's most active subfields. citations · hero ref

Author Last Decade Papers Cites
Win Cowger 1.5k 1.1k 235 179 133 32 1.7k
Keenan Munno 1.9k 1.3× 1.5k 1.3× 286 1.2× 182 1.0× 238 1.8× 20 2.1k
Sedat Gündoğdu 1.7k 1.1× 1.4k 1.2× 251 1.1× 145 0.8× 124 0.9× 70 2.0k
Robin Lenz 1.6k 1.1× 1.3k 1.2× 305 1.3× 214 1.2× 134 1.0× 16 1.7k
Huiwen Cai 1.7k 1.2× 1.3k 1.2× 356 1.5× 247 1.4× 177 1.3× 24 2.0k
Matthias Tamminga 1.5k 1.0× 1.1k 1.0× 268 1.1× 205 1.1× 160 1.2× 15 1.6k
Kayla C. Brignac 947 0.6× 771 0.7× 238 1.0× 134 0.7× 80 0.6× 6 1.2k
Nian Wei 1.4k 0.9× 1.1k 0.9× 290 1.2× 76 0.4× 113 0.8× 40 1.6k
Costanza Scopetani 1.8k 1.2× 1.4k 1.2× 404 1.7× 160 0.9× 193 1.5× 24 1.9k

Countries citing papers authored by Win Cowger

Since Specialization
Citations

This map shows the geographic impact of Win Cowger's research. It shows the number of citations coming from papers published by authors working in each country. You can also color the map by specialization and compare the number of citations received by Win Cowger with the expected number of citations based on a country's size and research output (numbers larger than one mean the country cites Win Cowger more than expected).

Fields of papers citing papers by Win Cowger

Since Specialization
Physical SciencesHealth SciencesLife SciencesSocial Sciences

This network shows the impact of papers produced by Win Cowger. Nodes represent research fields, and links connect fields that are likely to share authors. Colored nodes show fields that tend to cite the papers produced by Win Cowger. The network helps show where Win Cowger may publish in the future.

Co-authorship network of co-authors of Win Cowger

This figure shows the co-authorship network connecting the top 25 collaborators of Win Cowger. A scholar is included among the top collaborators of Win Cowger based on the total number of citations received by their joint publications. Widths of edges represent the number of papers authors have co-authored together. Node borders signify the number of papers an author published with Win Cowger. Win Cowger is excluded from the visualization to improve readability, since they are connected to all nodes in the network.

All Works

20 of 20 papers shown
1.
Gray, Andrew B., et al.. (2025). Microplastic characterization and transport mode —A flow-integrated approach to sampling urban waterways. Environmental Research. 269. 120908–120908. 5 indexed citations
2.
Gray, Andrew B., Hannah Hapich, Win Cowger, et al.. (2025). Microplastic pollution in the water column and benthic sediment of the San Pedro Bay, California, USA. Environmental Research. 269. 120866–120866. 9 indexed citations
3.
Gray, Andrew B., et al.. (2025). Quantifying microplastic fluvial flux from a coastal watershed—A microplastic rating curve approach. Journal of Environmental Management. 394. 127445–127445. 1 indexed citations
4.
Cowger, Win, et al.. (2024). Exploring microplastic distribution in Western North American snow. Journal of Hazardous Materials. 480. 136126–136126. 4 indexed citations
5.
Cowger, Win, Kathryn Willis, Marcus Eriksen, et al.. (2024). Global producer responsibility for plastic pollution. Science Advances. 10(17). eadj8275–eadj8275. 71 indexed citations breakdown →
6.
Cowger, Win, et al.. (2024). Moving toward automated µFTIR spectra matching for microplastic identification: addressing false identifications and improving accuracy. SHILAP Revista de lepidopterología. 4(1). 4 indexed citations
7.
Cowger, Win, Lisa Roscher, Ali Chamas, et al.. (2024). Generation of macro- and microplastic databases by high-throughput FTIR analysis with microplate readers. Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry. 416(6). 1311–1320. 9 indexed citations
8.
Cowger, Win, et al.. (2024). How many microplastics do you need to (sub)sample?. Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety. 275. 116243–116243. 20 indexed citations
9.
Leonard, Jamie, Annesh Borthakur, Vera S. Koutnik, et al.. (2023). Challenges of using leaves as a biomonitoring system to assess airborne microplastic deposition on urban tree canopies. Atmospheric Pollution Research. 14(2). 101651–101651. 42 indexed citations
10.
Cowger, Win, et al.. (2023). Trash AI: A Web GUI for Serverless Computer VisionAnalysis of Images of Trash. The Journal of Open Source Software. 8(89). 5136–5136. 1 indexed citations
11.
Eriksen, Marcus, Win Cowger, Scott Coffin, et al.. (2023). A growing plastic smog, now estimated to be over 170 trillion plastic particles afloat in the world’s oceans—Urgent solutions required. PLoS ONE. 18(3). e0281596–e0281596. 215 indexed citations breakdown →
12.
Bergmann, Melanie, Hans Peter H. Arp, Bethanie Carney Almroth, et al.. (2023). Moving from symptom management to upstream plastics prevention: The fallacy of plastic cleanup technology. One Earth. 6(11). 1439–1442. 28 indexed citations
13.
Koutnik, Vera S., et al.. (2022). Transport of microplastics in stormwater treatment systems under freeze-thaw cycles: Critical role of plastic density. Water Research. 222. 118950–118950. 50 indexed citations
14.
Frond, Hannah De, Win Cowger, Violet Compton Renick, et al.. (2022). What determines accuracy of chemical identification when using microspectroscopy for the analysis of microplastics?. Chemosphere. 313. 137300–137300. 26 indexed citations
15.
Koutnik, Vera S., et al.. (2022). Children's playgrounds contain more microplastics than other areas in urban parks. The Science of The Total Environment. 854. 158866–158866. 37 indexed citations
16.
Cowger, Win, Zacharias Steinmetz, Andrew B. Gray, et al.. (2021). Microplastic Spectral Classification Needs an Open Source Community: Open Specy to the Rescue!. Analytical Chemistry. 93(21). 7543–7548. 355 indexed citations breakdown →
17.
Waldschläger, Kryss, et al.. (2020). Settling and rising velocities of environmentally weathered micro- and macroplastic particles. Environmental Research. 191. 110192–110192. 75 indexed citations
18.
Cowger, Win, et al.. (2019). Estimating Riverine Microplastic Flux by Accounting for Transport Dynamics. AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts. 2019. 1 indexed citations
19.
Cowger, Win, et al.. (2019). Plastic Particle Data. OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints). 2 indexed citations
20.
Cowger, Win, Andrew B. Gray, & Richard C. Schultz. (2019). Anthropogenic litter cleanups in Iowa riparian areas reveal the importance of near-stream and watershed scale land use. Environmental Pollution. 250. 981–989. 24 indexed citations

Rankless uses publication and citation data sourced from OpenAlex, an open and comprehensive bibliographic database. While OpenAlex provides broad and valuable coverage of the global research landscape, it—like all bibliographic datasets—has inherent limitations. These include incomplete records, variations in author disambiguation, differences in journal indexing, and delays in data updates. As a result, some metrics and network relationships displayed in Rankless may not fully capture the entirety of a scholar's output or impact.

Explore authors with similar magnitude of impact

Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Keenan Munno Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Sedat Gündoğdu Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Robin Lenz Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Huiwen Cai Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Matthias Tamminga Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Kayla C. Brignac Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Nian Wei Breakdown of academic impact, for papers by Costanza Scopetani
Rankless by CCL
2026