A little more than a year ago, the newsletter Science Watch, published by the Philadelphia-based Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), began conducting analyses of the citation record of ecology and environmental sciences on a regular basis (The Scientist, Feb. 7, 1994, page 15). Since then, the newsletter has found that citation leaders in this burgeoning area come from a wide array of disciplines, including plant science, oceanography, bioremediation and pollution ecology, conservation biology, statistics, and animal behavior.
It is interesting to note that, in a recent analysis--using ISI's Science Indicators Database--half of the 10 most-cited papers from 1991-92 were from the field of biological oceanography. Following is the June 1994 Science Watch report, written by Peter D. Moore, a reader in ecology and chairman of human and environmental sciences in the Division of Life Sciences, King's College, London. The report--with an update on the number of...