Hot Papers

Where is today's most influential biomedical and biological research being done--at what institutions and in what countries? And in what journals are the results of this research most consistently published? Judging from an examination of the 81 life science articles featured in The Scientist's "Hot Papers" section during the past 12 months, the answers, in order, are: the National Institutes of Health; the United States; and the journal Cell. Looking back on the "Hot Papers" columns of the past year, The Scientist reported that NIH-based investigators at various branches of NIH contributed to seven of the 81 life sciences articles highlighted during the past year. (This may come as no great surprise, since, in a recent issue, The Scientist discovered that NIH is home to 10 of the 100 most-cited researchers of the 1980s [The Scientist, June 25, 1990, page 14].) Close on the heels of NIH was the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, whose scientists contributed six "Hot Papers" during the past year. The strong showing of Cold Spring Harbor is also not surprising; as The Scientist reported in its March 19, 1990, issue (page 20), Cold Spring Harbor ranked first among independent labs in citation impact. All of the papers featured in the "Hot Papers" column are selected from bimonthly citation reports generated by the Institute for Scientific Information in Philadelphia. Each paper is selected to appear in the column because it has quickly attracted an unusually large number of citations within 18 months of its publication. Not all papers that meet this criterion, however, are featured in the column because of limited space. To determine the ranking of institutions and countries that produced these highly cited papers, The Scientist used fractional counting to compensate for the increasing number of scientific papers that are collaborative efforts by researchers from numerous institutions and countries. For example, if a paper listed one scientist from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and one from the Roche Institute, each institution received half, or .5, of the credit for the paper. As mentioned, Bethesda, Md.-based NIH produced the greatest number of "Hot Papers" during the period surveyed. NIH also ranks first in terms of percentage share (5.2 percent). The "hottest" NIH institute was the National Cancer Institute, whose authors contributed to five of the papers. These five papers discussed the effects of zidovudine in children, the nomenclature of the P450 protein superfamily and the use of lymphocytes and interleukin-2 as a therapy for cancer patients. This last paper, which appeared in the May 14, 1990, "Hot Papers" column, was co-written by Steven A. Rosenberg, recently identified as the 10th most-cited researcher at NIH during the 1980s (The Scientist, June 25, 1990, page 14). The second institution on the list is the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif. Although Salk scientists contributed fewer papers than did investigators from several other research centers, each "Hot Paper" was an in-house effort (that is, none was the result of a collaboration with researchers from other institutions), so the Salk Institute received full credit for these papers. Two articles dealing with protooncogenes and transcriptional regulation, came from the lab of Inder M. Verma. The other two dealt with phosphorylation and the transcriptional efficacy of the nuclear protein CREB (K.K. Yamamoto, et al.) and the protein kinase family (Steven K. Hanks, et al.). Right behind the Salk Institute is Stanford University, which placed third with five papers and a 4.8 percent share. Unlike the Salk Institute, no single researcher or team from Stanford contributed more than one of its five papers. The Stanford papers discussed mouse hematopoietic stem cells, genetics of schizophrenia, glutamate neurotoxicity, and lymphocyte homing receptors. (ranked by fractional counting) Rank Name No. Papers Percentage Share 1 NIH 7 5.2 2 Salk Institute 4 4.9 3 Stanford University 5 4.8 4 Cold Spring Harbor 6 4.0 5 MIT 5 3.8 6 Harvard 5 3.5 7 CNRS, France 3 3.1 8 UC San Francisco 3 2.8 8 UC Berkeley 3 2.8 9 Johns Hopkins 3 2.5 9 Cambridge University 2 2.5 10 UC San Diego 3 2.2 (ranked by fractional counting) Rank Country No. Papers Percentage Share 1 United States 62 69.4 2 United Kingdom 8 6.2 3 Japan 6 5.9 4 France 5 5.5 5 West Germany 4 4.9 6 Switzerland 2 1.8 6 The Netherlands 2 1.8 7 Israel 1 1.2 8 Sweden 2 0.9 9 Canada 1 0.6 9 Australia 1 0.6 9 South Korea 1 0.6 10 Norway 1 0.3 10 Denmark 1 0.3 TOTAL: 100.00% Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which ranked frist in citation impact among independent labs, came in fourth on the list of institutions contributing to the past year's "Hot Papers" in terms of percent share (4.0). Scientists at this Long Island, N.Y.-based lab wrote or co-wrote six of the 81 papers. In fact, one group of researchers, led by David Beach, produced four of the six articles, which makes Beach's team the most prolific producer of high-impact papers during the past year. Beach and his colleagues (Hot Team, The Scientist, March 5, 1990, page 22) determined that the cdc2 protein kinase that initiates mitosis is the same in species as diverse as yeast and human beings. David Baltimore and Phillip A. Sharp helped put the Massachusetts Institute of Technology into fifth place on the list. Baltimore, who recently left MIT to take the helm at Rockefeller University (The Scientist, July 9, 1990, page 16), co-wrote three (one with Sharp) of MIT's "Hot Papers." These papers present findings on a specific inhibitor of a transcription factor, a DNA binding and dimerization motif, and the POU box- and homeo box-domains in the B-cell specific Oct-2 protein. Sharp, who worked with Baltimore on the Oct-2 protein domains, also fielded a paper on the intermediate complexes in transcription initiated by RNA polymerase II. Harvard University, which ranked first in last year's survey, tumbled to sixth place, with "only" five papers and a 3.5 percent share. The previous survey revealed that much of Harvard's success rested on the efforts of Louis M. Kunkel and colleagues, who contributed five papers last year on the genetic basis of muscular dystrophy. This past year, however, no team from Harvard made such a strong showing. Instead, the papers, which were spread out among the university's faculty, covered such diverse topics as transcriptional activators, activation of the cardiac muscarinic K+-channel, and the vasoconstrictor endothelin. The first foreign institution to appear on this list is the French-based Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), whose scientists contributed to three of the 81 life sciences "Hot Papers" of the past year. Pierre Chambon, of CNRS' Laboratoire de Gen‚tique Mol‚culaire des Eucaryotes, published a review on the role of nuclear receptors in transcription regulation. Dominique Arion and Laurent Meijer of CNRS' Station Biologique in Roscoff, France, worked with David Beach and Leonardo Brizuela on one of the cdc2 papers. The third paper from CNRS, written by Michel Lazdunski and his associates, discussed how endothelin contracts vascular smooth muscle cells by increasing intracellular Ca2+. Three branches of the University of California system pulled into the top 10 of the contributing institutions: University of California, San Francisco (3 papers, 2.8 percent share), Berkeley, (3 papers, 2.8 percent share), and San Diego (3 papers, 2.2 percent share). One star from the UC system is Robert Tjian of Berkeley, who has been identified as one of the most-cited scientists under the age of 45 (The Scientist, May 28, 1990, page 18). Tjian contributed to two papers: one on the role of leucine repeats and adjacent DNA on Fos-Jun dimerization, and the other on the multiple transcriptional activation domains in the transcription factor Sp1. The last two institutions in the top 10, which are both tied for ninth place, are Johns Hopkins University (3 papers, 2.5 percent share) and Cambridge University, U.K. (2 papers, 2.5 percent share). Two of Johns Hopkins' papers came from the laboratory of Bert Vogelstein. Vogelstein and his colleagues at the Oncology Center have precisely described the types of genetic mutations that cause colorectal cancer. This work has recently earned Vogelstein the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Cancer Research (The Scientist, May 14, 1990, page 28). Michael J. Berridge, one of the winners of last year's Lasker Foundation Medical Research Awards, wrote one of the Cambridge University papers with Antony Galione. The paper reviews cystolic calcium oscillators. The other contribution from Cambridge University presents additional information on the biochemistry of the cell cycle, notably cell division. In this paper, Jeremy Minshull and his associates demonstrated that cyclin synthesis is necessary for initiating mitosis. As in last year's survey, the United States outranked all other nations in total number of influential articles. U.S. scientists contributed 62 of the 81 life sciences papers, for a 69.4 percent share. However, the U.S. did not make quite as strong a showing as it did last year, when it claimed a 76.5 percent share of the "Hot Paper" pool. One reason could be the increased shares earned by France, Japan, and West Germany. Last year, these three countries ranked third, fourth, and sixth, respectively, with fractional counts of 4.1, 3.2, and 1.3 percent. This year, Japan, France, and West Germany ranked third, fourth, and fifth, respectively, with 5.9, 5.5, and 4.9 percent shares. Two of the papers that originated in Japan discuss endothelin. This is fitting, when one considers that Masashi Yanagisawa of the University of Tsukuba and his colleagues first described the structure and activity of this potent vasoconstrictor (Nature, 332:411-5, 31 March 1988). France's performance stems primarily from the CNRS scientists. West Germany can thank Phillips-Universit„t Marburg, which contributed two of that country's four papers. Only 23 journals are represented by the papers featured in The Scientist from July 1989 to the present. Cell, which is the highest-impact non-review journal in the life sciences (The Scientist, July 24, 1989, page 14), published 18 (22 percent) of last year's papers. Science and Nature came in second and third, with 14 and 12 papers, respectively. As was the case in last year's survey, these three journals together contributed more than 50 percent of the year's "Hot Papers" in the life sciences. In the next issue, The Scientist will reveal which organizations were the biggest supporters of the research reported in last year's "Hot Papers."

Hot Papers

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