In late September, representatives from NATO-member countries met at the organization’s headquarters in Brussels. The topic of discussion was not the military strength of the Warsaw Pact nations. Neither was it the political strategies to defend Western Europe. Rather, over 100 representatives came together to talk about the state of civil science in the Eastern Bloc. The gathering was a follow-up to another held in September 1986 on nonmilitary science in the Soviet Union, the procee

Calculating the influence and prestige of a given journal in chemistry (or any other field) isn't easy. Different chemists will give different opinions, depending upon their personal perspective and experience. But analyzing the collective judgment of the chemistry community, as reflected in the journals its members most frequently cite, allows for approximations of influence. Merely tabulating total citations, however, won't do. That would give undue advantage to fat journals, which have greate

For scientists, publishing in great quantity can be a sign of productivity or of striving to please the "paper counters" who sometimes serve on grant and promotion committees. Mere output, for individuals, is not always the mark of achievement—and the same goes for states. The Scientist recently surveyed the scientific output of America's 50 states and the District of Columbia and found Illinois, Maryland, and Louisiana the big winners for the period 1979-1987. These three boosted their sh

The British government’s scheme for “rationalizing” support for science, begun last year with an eval nation of earth science departments, has sparked considerable controversy. Having suffered major cuts in 1981, many U.K. university scientists are chilled by the prospect of further reductions for those departments that receive low performance ratings. Next to be scrutinized are departments of chemistry and physics. The Institute for Scientific Information recently undert

It will surprise few that methods papers lead the list of the most cited scientific articles ever—at least those tracked in the Institute for Scientific Information’s Science Citation Index, 1955 to 1987. “The lowry paper,” as it is known, stands head-and-shoulders above all others. This 1951 article by Oliver H. Lowry Nira J. Rosenbrough, A. Lewis Farr, and R.J. Randall, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, 193,265-75, reported an improved procedure for

“Better late than never,” one might say about the U.S. federal government’s response to AIDS, first identified in 1981. Only in the past few years has the government moved aggressively to fund the battle against the epidemic. Today, al- though federal funding has greatly increased, many continue to believe that it is still below what it should be. In the spring of 1987, AIDS researcher and immunochemist Paul Naylor of George Washington University called for a tripling of the

  Volume 2, #12 The Scientist June 27, 1988 Research   U.K.Science Slips, While Other Nations Move Ahead Author:DAVID PENDLEBURY Date: June 27, 1988 Over the 12-year period of 1976 to 1987, the United States, West Germany, France, and Japan increased their share of citations on a per paper basis, while the United Kingdom dipped slightly, according to new data compiled by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Quantitative studies of British science issu

The accompanying list presents the 10 articles of 1986 that were most cited during 1986 and 1987. The citations, given in brackets at the end of each reference, were recorded from the 3,160 journals scanned for the Institute for Scientific Information’s Science Citation Index. While there is some advantage held by early 1986 papers, which had more time to accumulate citations over these two years than those that appeared late in the year, the first ranking article was published in Sept

Research A Star Dies, And A Cottage Industry Is Born Author: DAVID PENDLEBURY Date: June 13, 1988 It took 160 thousand years for light from an exploding star in the Large Magellanic Cloud to reach Earth, but only one year for astronomers and physicists to emit their own burst of energy in the form of journal articles on this once-in-a-lifetime event. Since February 23, 1987, when the first light from the explosion was seen, the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) has recorded some 180 ar

With General Secretary Gorbachev and President Reagan scheduled to meet in Moscow this week, bets are on that the two leaders will be singing the praises of glasnost. But the policy of more openness (less censorship) has affected "only domestic media such as magazines and newspapers," says Thores Medvedev, an-exiled Soviet scientist, now at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. Indeed, despite the recent appearance of a number of prominent Soviet scientists at foreign meetings,

Research On The Crest Of A Superconductivity Tsunami AUTHOR:DAVID PENDLEBURY Date: May 16, 1988 For a world awash in preprints, published papers, and press releases on superconductivity, we have IBM researchers J.G. Bednorz and KA. Miller to thank. Their 1986 article reporting superconductivity in a copper oxide compound at 35 K, opened the floodgates to several hundred superconductivity publications in the early months of 1987. The accompanying graph, based on data from the Institute for Scien