U.S. Institutions, Individuals Dominate Worldwide Genetics Research

Editor's Note: Although laboratories throughout the world are making steady research advances in the fields of molecular biology and genetics, perhaps no other realm of life sciences investigation is so heavily dominated by United States institutions and individuals. Among papers in these fields published between 1988 and 1992, 19 of the 25 highest-impact organizations--based on the average number of times their papers were cited by subsequent researchers--sprung from U.S. institutes, universities, or corporations; meanwhile, of the top 25 cited scientists for this same period--ranked by citations per paper--21 were American, or associated principally with U.S. labs. The dramatic achievement and obvious influence of U.S. efforts in molecular biology and genetics were revealed by a study presented this past summer in the newsletter Science Watch (4[7]:1-2, July/August 1993), published by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), Philadelphia. Following is the newsletter's report, reprinted here with the permission of Science Watch and ISI. When the 17th International Congress of Genetics convened this past August in Birmingham, England, the participants had plenty to ponder as they considered the meeting's official theme: "genetics and the understanding of life." To help them organize their thoughts, Science Watch decided to rank the highest-impact performers in molecular biology and genetics, based on papers published and cited between 1988 and 1992. The top institutions and individuals are listed in the accompanying tables. In this survey, Science Watch considered those papers appearing in 190 dedicated journals of molecular biology and genetics, as well as select papers published in the multidisciplinary journals Science, Nature, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). A previous ranking of institutions in molecular biology and genetics for the years 1981-91 did not include these three high-impact, multidisciplinary journals, nor did it include as many journals (Science Watch, 3[4]:7, May 1992). In all, the current study took into account 163,775 papers of all types and the 1,131,016 citations those papers collected through 1992. The mean citation-per-paper score, or world average, was 6.91, while the average for United States papers was 10.53. (among those publishing at least 200 papers) RANK INSTITUTION NUMBER NUMBER OF CITATIONS OF PAPERS CITATIONS PER PAPER 1 Salk Institute 403 16,752 41.6 2 Cold Spring Harbor Lab 359 14,641 40.8 3 Whitehead Institute 392 15,543 39.7 4 Genentech 225 7,452 33.1 5 Chiron 200 6,566 32.8 6 Institut Chimie 261 8,315 31.8 Biologique,Strasbourg 7 Fred Hutchinson Cancer 413 11,177 27.1 Center 8 Massachusetts Institute 1,060 27,296 25.8 of Technology 9 Princeton University 369 8,841 24.0 10 MRC Lab Molecular 430 10,193 23.7 Biology, Cambridge 11 Children's Hospital, 433 9,691 22.4 Boston 12 Rockefeller University 702 15,285 21.8 13 Harvard University 3,020 62,430 20.7 14 University of California,979 19,923 20.4 San Diego 15 European Molecular 652 12,998 19.9 Biology Lab 16 NICHD 238 4,686 19.7 17 University of Ca. 1,621 30,570 18.9 San Francisco 18 Natl. Inst. for 344 6,411 18.6 Med Research,London 19 National Cancer Inst. 1,787 33,165 18.6 20 Hospital for Sick 330 6,084 18.4 Children, Toronto 21 Scripps Clinic 526 9,603 18.3 & Research Foundation 22 Massachusetts General 649 11,762 18.1 Hospital 23 California Institute 426 7,708 18.1 of Technology 24 University of California,1,369 24,282 17.7 Berkeley 25 Imperial Cancer Research 976 16,892 17.4 Fund The Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y. and the Whitehead Institute, Cambridge, Mass., which top the chart, make for something of a Big Three. All are elite independent research institutes. At fourth and fifth are the only industrial firms in the top 25, both California-based biotech companies: Genentech Inc., of South San Francisco, and Chiron Corp., headquartered in Emeryville. The Chiron totals include papers of another Emeryville firm, Cetus Corp., which Chiron acquired in late 1991. U.S. institutions take 19 of 25 places in one of the tables presented here. This is not a surprise, for two reasons: Many of the strongest research centers in molecular biology and genetics worldwide are located in the U.S.; and the large population of U.S. researchers active in this area is strongly represented in the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) database, upon which Science Watch's survey was based. As a consequence, and because U.S. researchers may look at papers published in U.S. journals more than they look at those in non-U.S. journals, U.S. papers have a leg up in terms of citation accumulation. All the more reason, then, to take note of the non-U.S. institutions listed. In sixth place on the chart is the Institut de Chimie Biologique, in Strasbourg, France. This institution, with Pierre Chambon--who holds 13th place in the other table--its most decorated investigator, is affiliated with the University of Strasbourg 1 and receives major research support from both INSERM and CNRS. Chambon and his team fielded the most cited paper of 1992 (Science Watch, 3[10]:1-2, 8, December 1992), which dealt with the retinoic X receptor. The other non-U.S. institutions listed are the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge (No. 10); the European Molecular Biology Lab in Heidelberg (No. 15); the National Institute for Medical Research in London (No. 18); Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children (No. 20), and, as a group, the U.K. laboratories of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (No. 25). Not listed, but worth special mention, is the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and its laboratories worldwide. The Hughes institute supports its researchers at their respective universities and hospitals. Sometimes the Hughes affiliation is presented in the author's address, but sometimes it is not. A complete picture of this organization was therefore impossible to obtain. Science Watch, however, did identify 2,514 papers that explicitly listed the HHMI affiliation. These papers were cited 71,251 times, for a citations-per-paper average of 28.34, which would have placed the institute at No. 7 in the institutional ranking. Other institutes deserving special mention are the Carnegie Institution's Department of Embryology in Baltimore (citations per paper score of 35.79); the Roche Institute, in Nutley, N.J. (34.53); and the La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation in La Jolla, Calif. (32.86). These three research institutes published fewer than 200 papers in molecular biology and genetics during 1988-92, so they were not ranked. The table of individual achievers lists the 25 most cited researchers who published 20 or more papers, ranked by citations per paper. It is noteworthy that nine of these 25 are Hughes investigators. (ranked by average cites per paper) RANK NAME / INSTITUTION NUMBER NUMBER CITATIONS OF PAPERS OF CITATIONS PER PAPER 1 S. McKnight* / Carnegie Institution 20 3,006 150.3 2 R. Evans* / Salk Institute 32 3,822 119.4 3 B. Franza / Cold Spring Harbor 21 2,455 116.9 Lab. 4 T. Curran / Roche Inst. Molecular 32 3,626 113.3 Biology 5 R. Tjian* / Univ. of California, 52 5,344 102.8 Berkeley 6 E. Harlow / Massachusetts General 27 2,394 88.7 Hospital 7 T. Hunter / Salk Institute 50 4,383 87.7 8 H. Weintraub* / Fred Hutchinson 42 3,487 83.0 Cancer Center 9 D. Baltimore / Rockefeller University 87 6,977 80.2 10 M. Karin / Univ. of California, San Diego 44 3,502 79.6 11 D. Beach* / Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 40 3,055 76.4 12 M. Rosenfeld* / Univ. California, 38 2,604 68.5 San Diego 13 P. Chambon / Institut de Chimie 66 4,402 66.7 Biologique 14 B. Vogelstein / Johns Hopkins University 43 2,829 65.8 15 P. Nurse / University of Oxford 49 3,178 64.9 16 P. Sharp / Mass. Institute of Technology 64 3,735 58.4 17 L. Tsui* / Hospital for Sick Children 54 3,094 57.3 18 I. Verma / Salk Institute 46 2,613 56.8 19 M. Green / University of Massachusetts 48 2,685 55.9 20 R. Klausner / NICHD 43 2,201 51.2 21 R. Roeder / Rockefeller University 60 2,951 49.2 22 A. Ullrich / Max Planck Inst. Biochemistry 65 3,161 48.6 23 J. Schlessinger / NYU Medical Center 72 3,354 46.6 24 F. Collins* / University of Michigan 70 3,254 46.5 25 R. White* / University of Utah 113 3,495 30.9 * Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Source: Science Watch / Institute for Scientific Information

U.S. Institutions, Individuals Dominate Worldwide Genetics Research

The Scientist Staff

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