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 share of scientific papers published in over 3,000 top-flight scientific journals (those indexed in the Institute for Scientific Information's Science Citation Index) by 1.5%, .9%, and .8%, respectively (see The Scientist, July 25, page 18). Texas and Delaware increased their shares by .5%, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Washington, and Arizona boosted theirs by +.4%, and California and Florida increased theirs by +.3%.
Papers from Maryland, the home of Johns Hopkins and the National Institutes of Health, were consistently cited at the highest levels during the entire period—in the range of 1.36 to 1.41 times the average for all U.S. papers (1.0). Besides its high quality, Maryland's scientific output compares favorably to the national average because of the predominance ...
