Rank is the
attribute of node
clinical_study, you can either use XmlDocument class or XMLReader to read xml and get its attribute value
see below snippet
var doc = new XmlDocument();
string xml = "<root><clinical_study rank="1"></clinical_study></root>"
doc.LoadXml(xml);
string szRank = doc.getElementByTagName("clinical_study")[0].Attributes["rank"].value;
hope it helps