Cold Spring Harbor Tops Among Independent Labs

Harvard, Hopkins, Stanford -- these are names that immediately spring to mind when one thinks of top-flight biological and biomedical research institutions in the United States. But it is important to remember that smaller institutions also contribute significantly to scientific knowledge. In fact, according to data from the Institute for Scientific Information's Science Citation Index (SCI), a few small independent research institutes in the U.S. carry just as much clout (or more) as do the "monoliths of medicine," at least when measured by citations to their papers. Using ISI's data, The Scientist calculated the citation impact of the 74 members of the Association of Independent Research Institutes (AIRI), a consortium of nonteaching organizations that focus largely on biological and biomedical research. The papers tracked in this analysis were published between 1973 and 1987 and had to have been indexed in the SCI. The citations that were tallied for those papers are from the same period, 1973-87. After all 74 were ranked, the top 20 that published at least 100 papers indexed by ISI over this period were selected. The group was then ranked by average number of citations per paper (see "Citation Impact" in accompanying table). (Among Those That Published More Than 100 Papers, 1973-87) Name Papers Citations Impact 1. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. 839 49,217 58.7 2. Salk Institute for Biological Studies, San Diego 2,834 124,942 44.1 3. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle 1,756 59,800 34.1 4. Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, Mass. 208 6,624 31.8 5. Roche Institute of Molecular Biology, Nutley, N.J. 1,731 53,450 30.9 6. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. 1,695 51,896 30.6 7. Trudeau Institute, Saranac Lake, N.Y. 288 8,358 30.0 8. Scripps Clinic and Research* Foundation La Jolla, Calif. 4,972 124,323 25.0 9. Wistar Institute, Philadelphia 1,586 38,758 24.4 10. New York Blood Center, New York City 734 17,620 24.0 11. La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation La Jolla, Calif. 405 8,915 22.0 12. Joslin Diabetes Center, Boston 304 6,437 21.2 13. American Health Foundation, New York City 820 17,127 20.9 14. Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Me. 994 19,872 20.0 15. Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology, Shrewsbury, Mass. 1,347 26,807 19.9 16. Public Health Research Institute of the City of New York 796 15,769 19.8 17. Forsyth Dental Center, Boston 617 11,270 18.3 18. Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute, Palo Alto, Calif. 539 9,808 18.2 19. Boston Biomedical Research Institute, Boston 696 12,075 17.3 20. Center for Blood Research, Boston 180 3,088 17.2 *Scripps is no longer an AIRI member. The average citation impact for these 20 AIRI institutions turned out to be 26.4. It is important to note that that average is not very much lower than the impact figures exhibited by other biomedical research institutes of the first rank, such as Rockefeller University (31.9) and the United Kingdom's Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories (29.5). Moreover, since the average for all papers in the database for the period 1973-87 is 11.0, these 20 AIRI institutes have all performed at a significantly higher-than-average level, and the top 11 in the list collected citations at twice the average rate. Cold Spring Harbor, under the directorship of DNA codiscoverer and Nobel laureate James D. Watson, stands head and shoulders above all others. With a citation average of 58.7, the Long Island, N.Y., lab's papers have had a citation impact that is more than five times greater than the average for the database and more than twice that of the average for the top 20 AIRI institutions. By all accounts, among Watson's many talents is one for finding the best researchers. The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, which is ranked second in the list with an impact rating of 44.1, published more than 2,800 papers during 1973-87. These articles received nearly 125,000 citations. That makes the Salk Institute first in total citations and, in output, second only to its neighbor the Scripps Clinic, which fielded about twice as many papers for nearly the same number of citations. (In 1989 Scripps withdrew from AIRI membership; it is included here because it was an AIRI member during the period examined.) The names of the other institutes among the first 10 will be familiar to many readers, with the exception, perhaps, of the relatively small Trudeau Institute of Saranac Lake, N.Y., which specializes in research on the cellular aspects of immunology. While it produced fewer than 300 papers during this 15-year period, those articles made their mark. Readers of The Scientist should not be surprised to see the Salk Institute, the La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation, or the Carnegie Institution of Washington ranked among top independent labs. After all, these three previously placed third, sixth, and eighth in a list of institutes that had fielded the largest number of "Hot Papers" featured in this newspaper during 1987 and 1988 (The Scientist, May 1, 1989, page 12). It is important to note that the production of even a few "superstar papers," which receive hundreds or thousands of citations each year, can substantially boost the citation impact of an institution. Also, those institutions that concentrate their work in molecular biology, a high-impact field, have an advantage over those focusing on lower-impact fields, which makes the appearance here of the Joslin and Forsyth Centers all the more impressive. The outstanding performance of these independent research labs, as reflected by the recognition that the scientific community has given to their papers over this 15-year period, demonstrates that little players can be every bit the equal (and sometimes the better) of the giants of research.

Cold Spring Harbor Tops Among Independent Labs

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