Among the institutions ranked by total citations, none surpassed the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), whose authors contributed to some 1,900 papers during the 11-year period; collectively, these papers garnered more than 15,500 citations. The most-cited paper in this survey, in fact, was coauthored by a USDA-affiliated author. "A review of Neospora caninum and neosporosis," published in 1996 in Veterinary Parasitology (67[1-2]: 1-59, 1996), has now been cited more than 350 times. This discussion of the protozoan parasite Neospora caninum was co-written by USDA microbiologist Jitender P. Dubey, who appears atop the list of researchers, with 2,264 citations to his published work over the last decade. The paper’s other author, David S. Lindsay, now at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, is at #6 on the list of highly cited researchers.

The University of California, Davis, also distinguished itself in the total-citations ranking, with its output of 2,498 papers (the largest of all the institutions in this survey) attracting a total of more than 13,600 citations. The authors of UC Davis’s most-cited paper (J. Pare, et al., Can. J. Vet Res., 60[2]: 133-9, 1996) include two of the scientists featured here: Mark C. Thurmond (#9) and Sharon K. Hietala (#13). Like the Dubey et al. report mentioned above, the paper by Pare, Thurmond, and Hietala (with more than 140 citations to date) also concerns the Neospora caninum parasite and its effects.

In the impact ranking, the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Northern Ireland (DARDNI) made the most of its 272 papers, topping the list with an average of more than 10 citations per paper. The most-cited DARDNI report, a 1998 paper from the Canadian Veterinary Journal (39[1]: 44-55, 1998), includes among its authors Gordon M. Allan (#3 on the list) and DARDNI colleague Francis McNeilly (#4). The report is also the most cited in this survey for the University of Saskatchewan, represented here by the paper’s first author, John A. Ellis (#2), and by Deborah M. Haines (#7).

Among journals, Theriogenology was tops with more than 22,500 citations to its 3,407 papers published between 1994 and 2004. Incidentally, papers from the journal Vaccine were included in the survey, but the journal itself was excluded from the accompanying table (to the right), despite its dominant count of nearly 46,000 citations. Many of Vaccine’s 4,912 papers concern veterinary medicine and animal health, but many others center on larger matters of infectious disease, immunization, vaccination, and the like. Science Watch elected to confine the table to specialty journals in veterinary and animal research.

Clearly, UC Davis and DARDNI stand out, both for institutional performance and for the numbers of their researchers who figure among the highly cited authors featured here. Other institutions that managed to make both the total-citations and impact lists are the USDA, Ohio State University, the Institute for Animal Health, the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Minnesota, Wageningen University, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University of Denmark, Washington State University, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Table#1: 

Rank Institution Citations 1994 - 2004 1 U.S. Department of Agriculture 15,541 2 University of California, Davis 13,662 3 Ohio State University 7,521 4 University of Utrecht 7,386 5 Colorado State University 6,738 6 Cornell University 6,614 7 University of Wisconsin 6,147 8 University of Minnesota 6,105 9 University of Guelph 6,015 10 University of Georgia 5,939 11 University of Pennsylvania 5,927 12 North Carolina State University 5,859 13 Texas A&M University 5,676 14 University of Saskatchewan 5597 15 University of Florida 5,524 16 Wageningen University 5,118 17 INRA (France) 4,965 18 Michigan State University 4,710 19 Swedish Univ. Agricultural Sciences 4,605 20 University of Bristol 4,413 21 Royal Vet. and Agricult. Univ. (Denmark) 4,336 22 University of Illinois 4,288 23 Washington State University 4,245 24 Institute for Animal Health (U.K.) 4,110 25 Ctrs. Disease Control and Prevention 3,991

Rank Institution Impact 1994 - 2004 1 Dept. Agricult. & Rural Dev. No. Ireland 10.31 2 Institut Pasteur 9.72 3 University of Maryland 8.98 4 Ctrs. Disease Control and Prevention 8.83 5 Danish Veterinary Laboratory 8.75 6 Institute for Animal Health (U.K.) 8.56 7 Wageningen University 8.24 8 U.S. Department of Agriculture 8.08 9 Moredun Research Institute (Scotland) 7.48 10 CSIRO (Australia) 7.41 11 U.S. Army 6.96 12 Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada 6.66 13 National Veterinary Institute (Sweden) 6.45 14 U.S. Food & Drug Administration 6.39 15 University of Nebraska 6.10 16 University of Wisconsin 5.78 17 Swedish Univ. Agricultural Sciences 5.74 18 Washington State University 5.65 19 Ohio State University 5.65 20 University of Saskatchewan 5.60 21 Animal Medical Center, N.Y. 5.55 22 University of Minnesota 5.50 23 University of California, Davis 5.47 24 Royal Vet. and Agricult. Univ. (Denmark) 5.40 25 Iowa State University 5.35

Table#2: