Who will be the science leaders of the decade? Most likely, the future leaders are relatively young investigators who have already been making their mark and who can be expected to continue producing elegant, high-impact papers throughout the 1990s and well into the next century.
Drawing up a short list of such scientists is no mean task, however; the possible selection criteria are virtually limitless. To narrow the field somewhat, The Scientist decided to turn to data from the Institute for Scientific Information's (ISI's) Science Citation Index files. Such citation data serve as an indicator of the scientific community's collective judgment on the impact and influence of an individual's work.
By tracking papers published from 1981-88 and the citations that those papers attracted over the same period, The Scientist attempted to identify recently publishing scientists whose work, taken as a whole, carried clout in the 1980s.
The citation histories of ...
