For this article, Steve Bunk interviewed Carl R. Woese, Stanley O. Ikenberry Professor Microbiology, University of Illinois, and Gary J. Olsen, associate professor of microbiology, University of Illinois. Data from the Web of Science (ISI, Philadelphia) show that Hot Papers are cited 50 to 100 times more often than the average paper of the same type and age.

B.L. Maidak, J.R. Cole, C.T. Parker, Jr., G.M. Garrity, N. Larsen, B. Li, T.G. Lilburn, M.J. McCaughey, G.J. Olsen, R. Overbeek, S. Pramanik, T.M. Schmidt, J.M. Tiedje, C.R. Woese, "A new version of the RDP (Ribosomal Database Project)," Nucleic Acids Research, 27:171-3, January, 1999. (Cited in more than 175 papers since publication)

The story of the Ribosomal Database Project begins in the 1960s, when scientists recognized a new way to group organisms aside from the classical method of comparing physical features. Molecular data also could be used, an approach that would...

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