Citations Reveal Leaders In Neuroscience

Sidebar: The Most-cited Papers In Neuroscience, 1988-92 Editor's Note: In 1989, the United States Congress declared the 1990s as the Decade of the Brain. In an effort to assess the neuroscience research being conducted during this period, the newsletter Science Watch compiled a list of the top neuroscience research centers and most-cited papers for the five-year period 1988-92. Science Watch --published by the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)--used the ISI Science Indicators Database to identify leaders in neuroscience, a field that has been producing breakthrough after breakthrough in areas such as Alzheimer's disease and neuronal function in recent years. The following article is reprinted from the February 1994 issue of Science Watch (5[2]:1-2), with permission of the newsletter and ISI. Perhaps forever destroying the stereotype that Californians are wanting when it comes to gray matter, two research institutions in the Golden State--the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla and California Institute of Technology in Pasadena--have captured the top two spots in Science Watch's latest ranking for neuroscience research. The survey examined about 147,000 papers published and cited during the period 1988-92. Half of the top 12 institutions in this field call California home. The other four from the sunny state ranking near the top are Stanford University, at fifth; the University of California, San Francisco, at sixth; and Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, Calif., and the University of California, Irvine, at 11th and 12th, respectively. In the table at right, the top 25 institutions (among those that published at least 200 papers during the five-year span) are ranked according to their citations-per-paper scores, a weighted measure of research impact. The current ranking actually updates a survey of neuroscience research that Science Watch featured three years ago, based on papers published between 1986 and 1990 (Science Watch, 2[6]:1-2, July 1991). In the previous study, neuroscience papers from the multidisciplinary journals Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences were not included in the analysis, since such papers could not, at the time, be selected out from the countless other types of reports appearing in those journals. This time around, however, neuroscience papers appearing in the Big Three multidisciplinary journals were taken into account. And, not surprisingly, the heavyweight trio provided nearly all the action in terms of highly cited papers. The table at left lists the most cited neuroscience papers of each year from 1988 through 1992. Of the 17 papers, Science and Nature published 15 between them, and PNAS and Neuron published one apiece. Among the top three institutions from the table, two managed to get more than one paper on the list of most-cited reports: the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry, Martinsried, Germany, fielded three of the papers (J. Leibrock et al., in 1989; K. Keinanen et al., in 1990; and A. Hohn et al., in 1990), while the Salk Institute fielded two papers (M. Hollman et al., in 1989; and J. Boulter et al., in 1990). Although Science Watch examined only those institutions that produced more than 200 papers between 1988 and 1992, a few smaller producers, whose output of papers was just below the cutoff for inclusion in the study, deserve mention. They include the international pharmaceutical firm Merck, Sharp & Dohme (United States offices, under the name Merck & Co., located in Rahway, N.J.; 176 papers; impact of 14.41); the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, based in Bethesda, Md. (173 papers; impact of 8.18); the University of Geneva, Switzerland (186 papers; impact of 7.82); and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City (189 papers; impact of 7.58). As the table of papers illustrates, the hot areas of investigation in neuroscience during 1988-92 include amyloid proteins in Alzheimer's disease, glutamate receptors, and the role of calcium channels in neuronal function. NEUROSCIENCE RESEARCH, 1988-92: INSTITUTIONS RANKED BY CITATION IMPACT (among those publishing at least 200 papers, 1998-92) Source: ISI's Science Indicators Database Rank Institution Papers CitationsImpact 1 Salk Institute,La Jolla, Calif.304 5,01916.51 2 California Institute of Technology, Pasadena 210 2,740 13.05 3 Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry, Germany 547 5,63310.30 4 Brigham & Women's Hospital, Boston 236 2,367 10.03 5Stanford University, Calif.1,0019,8109.80 6University of California, San Francisco 1,268 11,626 9.17 7Yale University, New Haven, Conn.1,45413,1009.01 8Washington University, St. Louis1,034 9,2518.95 9Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.2,19419,3738.83 10Rockefeller University, New York 604 5,308 8.79 11Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, Calif. 288 2,523 8.76 12 University of California, Irvine 862 7,520 8.72 13 University of Heidelberg, Germany 587 5,0868.66 14 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. 419 3,583 8.55 15 National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Bethesda, Md. 1,062 8,768 8.26 16 National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Md. 1,490 12,249 8.22 17 University of Chicago, 6204,919 7.93 18University of London, University College 513 3,902 7.61 19 Columbia University, New York 1,539 11,650 7.57 20 Massachusetts General Hospital,Boston 8076,0487.49 21 University of California, San Diego 1,478 11,0617.48 22University of Miami, Coral Gables, Fla.518 3,808 7.35 23 Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. 371 2,697 7.27 24 McLean Hospital, Belmont, Mass. 267 1,882 7.05 25 Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore 1,698 11,909 7.01

Citations Reveal Leaders In Neuroscience

The Scientist Staff

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