This time, for a slightly different view, Science Watch attempted to narrow the focus more towards geology, with a population of journals drawn from Thomson’s Science Citation Index categories denoting "Geology," "Geochemistry & Geophysics," "Geosciences-Multidisciplinary," and "Mineralogy." From the resultant sample of 224 journals and more than 150,000 papers published and cited between 1996 and early 2007, Science Watch here presents high-impact institutions (first table) in two separate rankings, featuring, at left, those with the highest total citations, and, on the right, those averaging the highest numbers of citations per paper. Also featured in other tables on this page are highly cited researchers (below) and journals (right).

As usual in a total-citations ranking, larger institutions tend to wield an advantage thanks to their abundance of published papers, and this list is no exception—particularly with the inclusion of several large governmental organizations representing scores of separate research installations (NASA, the Russian and Chinese academies of sciences, the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientific [CNRS], etc.). Nevertheless, the University of Colorado shows its clout near the top of the list, as do the University of Washington and the University of Cambridge.

The cites-per-paper ranking, meanwhile, displays its usual penchant for allowing smaller-producing institutions to shine through. Atop this list, the University of New Hampshire takes the crown, despite a comparatively modest output of 498 papers within the selected journal set. One of these papers, a 1997 Geology report on Holocene climatic instability some 8,000 years ago (also featuring first author Richard B. Alley of Penn State, #15 on the list of researchers), has now been cited more than 400 times and is the third-most-cited paper in this survey.

Among the featured authors, none bested the citation total of the University of Manitoba’s Frank C. Hawthorne and his tally of more than 2,200. Hawthorne is also the only researcher in the current survey to have been ranked in Science Watch’s 2001 geosciences report. His most-cited publication here, a 1997 American Mineralogist paper on the nomenclature of minerals known as amphiboles, has been cited more than 260 times. (The paper’s coauthors, incidentally, include Joel D. Grice, #9 on the current list.)

Of the most-cited journals (right table), Geophysical Research Letters dwarfs all comers in terms of output and citations, with more than 116,000 citations to 13,000 papers published since 1996. This journal also embodies—despite Science Watch’s attempt to focus on geology and closely related areas—the inescapable, multidisciplinary breadth that characterizes geosciences as a whole. In addition to earthbound geological studies, Geophysical Research Letters published numerous reports on climatological and atmospheric research (including a 1998 report on the Arctic Oscillation, the most-cited report in the survey, with a tally topping 800). And the journal reaches even higher, notably in high-impact reports from the Fast Auroral Snapshot (FAST) satellite mission, an effort to examine and record the Earth’s magnetic and electric fields from orbit. Hence, the presence among the authors of several space scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and elsewhere. In geosciences, clearly, the sky’s no limit.

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[Table 1]

Geology/Geosciences Institutions Ranked by Citations and Citation Impact (among those that published ≥ 400 papers, 1996-2007)
Rank Institution Citations 1996-2006 1 U.S. Geological Survey 23,172 2 NASA 20,303 3 University of Colorado 15,365 4 Russian Academy of Sciences 15,019 5 Chinese Academy of Sciences 14,937 6 University of Washington 12,934 7 University of Cambridge 12,573 8 Caltech 12,459 9 Univ. Calif., Berkeley 12,139 10 CNRS (France) 11,993 11 Australian National University 11,554 12 Geological Survey of Canada 10,579 13 Stanford University 10,134 14 NOAA 9,960 15 CNR (Italy) 9,511 16 University of Arizona 9,375 17 MIT 9,120 18 Univ. Calif., Los Angeles 8,552 19 University of Wisconsin 8,440 20 University of Tokyo 8,388 21 Columbia University 8,235 22 University of Bergen 8,194 23 University of Bern 7,986 24 Pennsylvania State University 7,976 25 University of Oxford 7,483		Rank Institution Impact 1996-2006 1 University of New Hampshire 14.62 2 Natl. Ctr. Atmospheric Research 14.46 3 Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst. 13.45 4 Princeton University 13.14 5 University of Washington 12.57 6 University of Bergen 11.79 7 NOAA 11.72 8 University of Bern 11.71 9 Oregon State University 11.62 10 Columbia University 11.37 11 Univ. Calif., Santa Barbara 11.00 12 University of Kiel 10.82 13 MIT 10.75 14 University of Colorado 10.71 15 Univ. Calif., Los Angeles 10.48 16 University of Cambridge 10.21 17 Alfred Wegener Institute 10.20 18 Australian National University 10.16 19 Pennsylvania State University 10.16 20 Caltech 10.15 21 Univ. Calif., Santa Cruz 9.96 22 University of Minnesota 9.90 23 Stanford University 9.76 24 University of Utrecht 9.72 25 University of Bayreuth 9.68

SOURCE: Thomson Scientific Topical Citation Report

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[Table 2]

Highly Cited Authors in Geosciences, 1996-2007 (Ranked by total citations)
	Rank	Name	Institution	Department/ Specialty	Papers	Citations
	1	Frank C. Hawthorne	University of Manitoba	Crystallography/Mineralogy	194	2,204
	2	Roger Powell	University of Melbourne	Metamorphic Geology	53	1,825
	3	Charles W. Carlson	Univ. Calif., Berkeley	Space Physics	72	1,822
	4	Timothy J.B. Holland	University of Cambridge	Petrology	18	1,592
	5	Andre Balogh	Imperial College London	Space Physics	171	1,568
	6	H. John B. Birks	University of Bergen	Ecology/Palaeoecology	52	1,548
	7	Peter C. Burns	University of Notre Dame	Mineralogy	120	1,414
	8	Henri Reme	CNRS, CESR,Toulouse	Space Science	165	1,335
	9	Joel D. Grice	Canadian Museum of Nature	Mineralogy	84	1,330
	10	Juhn G. Liou	Stanford University	Geol./Environmental Sciences	95	1,327
	11	James P. McFadden	Univ. Calif., Berkeley	Space Physics	44	1,324
	12	Jean Poesen	Katholieke Univ. Leuven	Geomorphology	104	1,290
	13	C. Mark Fanning	Australian National University	Earth Sciences	116	1,275
	14	Alfred Kroner	Johannes Gutenberg Univ., Mainz	Earth Sciences	82	1,241
	15	Richard B. Alley	Pennsylvania State University	Geosciences	57	1,234
	16	Zhisheng An	Chinese Academy of Sciences	Geology	69	1,210
	17	Robert E. Ergun	University of Colorado	Space Physics	36	1,172
	18	Victor A. Drits	Russian Academy of Sciences	Geology	59	1.162
	19	Shigenori Maruyama	Tokyo Institute of Technology	Earth Sciences	57	1,138
	20	Andre F. Lotter	University of Utrecht	Palaeoecology	35	1,107
	21	Samuel A. Bowring	MIT	Geology	62	1,101
	22	Simon A. Wilde	Curtin Univ. Technology	Applied Geology	56	1,098
	23	Forrest S. Mozer	Univ. Calif., Berkeley	Space Physics	43	1,090
	24	Michael A. Temerin	Univ. Calif., Berkeley	Space Physics	30	1,088
	25	T. Mark Harrison	Univ. Calif., Los Angeles	Geology	35	1,084
		Robert P. Lin	Univ. Calif., Berkeley	Space Physics	77	1,084
	SOURCE: Thomson Scientific Topical Citation Report

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