This individual-level data-set describes the most productive European Union (EU) researchers (in terms of articles), during 2007 - 2018, irrespective of their research field. Specifically, in the data-set file, i.e. "iconic_5000", we profile the most productive 4,588 EU researchers using the following variables: number of papers; number of citations; repeated collaborations; number of co-authors; number of co-authors from the same country (as the author), from the same city, from the same institution and from different countries; geographical dispersion (number of unique countries wherein co-authors are based in), star (the largest number of articles published by one of an author's collaborators), godfather (the largest number of citations received by one of an author's collaborators), co-authors' citations and co-authors' papers. Variables are yearly measured.