The baseline time span for this database is 1997-October 31, 2007 (fifth
bimonthly period in 2007). The resulting database contained 4,151 (10
years) and 1,513 (2 years) papers; 7,088 authors; 108 countries; 245
journals; and 1,843 institutions.
Interview Menu - Interviews,
first-person essays, and profiles about people in a
wide variety of fields which pertain to this
special topic of Zircon Dating.
OVERVIEW
Zircon is a neosilicate mineral that is abundant in the Earth’s
crust. Because it is so pervasive, zircon is used as a geochronological
tool—scientists can gauge the rate of decay of radioactive uranium
into lead, and thus deduce the age of the rock containing the zircon
crystals. This use is the focus of our Special Topic this month.
Both the ten- and two-year paper lists follow a similar pattern. They are a
mix of original articles and reviews looking at zircon dating from two
different viewpoints: either reporting on studies which used zircon dating,
or looking at the methodology of zircon dating itself.
Papers in the former category include reports on Archaen rocks in western
Greenland and northwestern Scotland, the architecture of the
ultrahigh-pressure Dabie Shan in China, placing the Permian-Triassic
boundary in southern China, the evolution of the Circum-Indian orogens in
eastern Gondwana, and the onset of the India-Asia continental collision in
the western Himalayas.
Specific analyses employing zircon dating include uranium-lead
radiometrics,
SHRIMP,
TIMS, TEMORA 1, CA-TIMS, and fission-tracking. Other papers in this listing
discuss the interpretation of zircon data.
Methodology: To construct this database, papers were
extracted based on title- and author-supplied keywords for Zircon Dating.
The keywords used were as follows:
(zircon and (dat* or geochron*))
The baseline time span for this database is 1997-October 31, 2007 (fifth
bimonthly period in 2007). The resulting database contained 4,151 (10
years) and 1,513 (2 years) papers; 7,088 authors; 108 countries; 245
journals; and 1,843 institutions.
Rankings: Once the database was in place, it was used to
generate the lists of top 20 papers (two- and ten-year periods), authors,
journals, institutions, and nations, covering a time span of 1997-October
31, 2007 (fifth bimonthly, a 10-year plus 10-month period).
The top 20 papers are ranked according to total cites. 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 as follows:
