The baseline time span for this database is (publication years)
1999-February 28, 2009 from the first bimonthly update (a 10-year + 2-month
period). The resulting database contained 3,228 (10 years) and 1,731 (2
years) papers; 9,874 authors; 66 nations; 738 journals; and 1,864
institutions. See additional information below in the overview &
methodology sections.
Interviews, first-person essays, and profiles about
people in a wide variety of fields which pertain to
this special topic of Autophagy.
OVERVIEW
Autophagy, a process by which a cell self-degrades, sounds more deleterious
than it actually is. In fact, autophagy is an essential process in cell
growth, development, and homeostasis. Though the phenomenon was first
discovered in the 1960s, autophagy's functions and mechanisms have gone
largely undiscovered until more recently.
This month, Special Topics examines the literature on autophagy, both over
the past decade and over the past two years. The initial data pool was
constructed with the keyword "autophag*" in titles, abstracts, and keywords
sections of original articles, reviews, and proceedings papers published
between January 1999 and February 2009. To make the lists of papers more
on-target, the top 20 papers over the past decade and over the past two
years were limited to "autophag*" in the title only.
Three themes are prevalent among the top papers from the past decade:
possible mechanisms of autophagy, the role of autophagy in disease
(particularly cancer and neurodegenerative diseases), and the role of
autophagy in nutrient starvation. These themes persist among papers on the
two-year list as well. In addition, more recent papers speculate on the
relationship between autophagy and apoptosis, as well as autophagy's role
in hemodynamic stress, ischemia, and reperfusion in the heart.
Methodology: The baseline time span for
this database is (publication years) 1999-February 28, 2009 from
the first bimonthly update (a 10-year + 2-month period). The resulting
database contained 3,228 (10 years) and 1,731 (2 years) papers; 9,874
authors; 66 nations; 738 journals; and 1,864 institutions. See
additional paper and rankings information below.
Papers: To construct the top 20 papers lists for the past
decade and the past two years, the papers were further narrowed down by the
title keywords "autophag*." This adjustment resulted in the top 20 papers
being selected from a pool of 1,266 (10 years) and 770 (2 years) papers.
Rankings: Once the database was in place, it was used to
generate list of authors, journals, institutions, and nations. Rankings for
author, journal, institution, and country are listed in three ways:
according to total cites, total papers, and total cites/paper. The paper
thresholds and corresponding percentages used to determine scientist,
institution, country, and journal rankings according to total cites/paper,
and total papers respectively are listed in the table below. In some cases,
further thresholds are used, and noted only where applicable.
Entity
Authors
Institutions
Nations
Journals
Thresholds
18
9
13
1*
Percentage:
%1
%10
%50
%50
*All rankings have a 5 paper threshold for all measures.