380 VOLUME 24 NUMBER 4 APRIL 2006 NATURE BIOTECHNOLOGY

Trends in biotech literature 2005Stacy Lawrence

Unlike in 2004, when EU researchers easily outstripped US scientists in ouput of biotech papers, last year the two regions produced a nearly identi-cal volume of biotech-related papers. South Korea dropped out of the top 15 countries in terms of biotech paper output, (92 and 16 papers in 2004 and

2005, respectively) making way for Belgium. Papers from US institutions, such as Harvard and MIT, are by far the most cited. Research in metabo-lomics and nanotech was particularly fertile, whereas previously booming fields, such as proteomics and RNAi, plateaued in paper output.

Highest cited US institutionsFrom 1995 to 2005, US institutions have dominated in terms of most cited molecular biology and genetics papers.

0 50,000 100,000 150,000 200,000 250,000 300,000 350,000 400,000 450,000

Citations

Univ. of OxfordUniv. of Tokyo

Univ. of CambridgeEuropean Molecular Biol. Lab.

Univ. of WashingtonUniv. of Pennsylvania

Univ. of California, BerkeleyBaylor College of Medicine

Washington Univ.Columbia Univ.

National Cancer InstituteYale Univ.

Univ. of California, San DiegoJohns Hopkins Univ.

MITStanford Univ.

Max Planck SocietyUniv. of California, San Francisco

University of TexasHarvard Univ. 416,927

186,889168,901

154,371

144,164133,578

130,381121,930

121,435117,443

110,556108,702

107,481

105,894

103,510102,356

96,46391,360

86,127

83,144

Average citationsper paper

5437533552764249473848464348

3961362539

36

Number of citationsSource: In-Cites, Essential Science Indicators

Number of biotech journal articles by countryLast year, Belgium replaced South Korea among the top 15 countries publishing biotech papers.

0 200 400 600 800

2005

2004

Belgium

Australia

Brazil

The Netherlands

Spain

India

Italy

France

Canada

China

Japan

Germany

United Kingdom

United States

European Union

Number of papers

Co

un

try

661682

660

178

158

151

145

102

87

79

69

65

61

53

48

38

514

100

120

98

112

77

56

49

54

50

57

46

34

27

Based on search for papers containing “biotechnology” in abstract. Source: National Center for Biotechnology Information’s PubMed

Historical trends in biotech fieldsLast year, the most growth occurred in papers related to nanotech and metabolomics, each increasing by about one-fifth.

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

4,000

�� �� �

Metabolomics

ES cells

Systems biology

Pharmacogenomics

Nanotechnology

Antisense

Proteomics

RNAi

Gene therapy

200520042003200220012000

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Year

Nu

mb

er o

f p

aper

s

Obtained using fields (e.g., proteomics) as search term in published papers. Source: National Center for Biotechnology Information’s PubMed

Biotech journal impactPrimary research journal Impact factorNature Biotechnology 22.4Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 10.5Genome Research 10.4Molecular and Cellular Proteomics 9.6Pharmacogenetics 6.4Bioinformatics 5.7Stem Cells 5.5Molecular Therapy 5.2Gene Therapy 5.0Review journal Impact factorNature Reviews Drug Discovery 19.6Trends in Biotechnology 8.6Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering 8.2Current Opinion in Biotechnology 8.1Source: ISI categories Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology; Engineering, Biomedical

Top cited paper by fieldField Author Title Citation Times citedRNAi Reynolds, A. et al. Rational siRNA design for RNA interference Nat. Biotechnol. 22, 326–330 (2004) 184ES cells Sato, N. et al. Maintenance of pluripotency in human and mouse embryonic stem cells through activation

of Wnt signaling by a pharmacological GSK-3-specific inhibitorNat. Med. 10, 55–63 (2004) 142

Computational biology

Gentleman, R.C. et al. Bioconductor: open software development for computational biology and bioinformatics Genome Biol. 5, R80 (2004) 124

Proteomics Anderson, N.L. et al. The human plasma proteome: a nonredundant list developed by combination of fourseparate sources

Mol. Cell. Proteomics 2, 311–326 (2004)

92

DNA vaccines Yang, Z.Y. et al. A DNA vaccine induces SARS coronavirus neutralization and protective immunity in mice Nature 428, 561–564 (2004) 90Diagnostics Carlson, C.S. et al. Mapping complex disease loci in whole-genome association studies Nature 429, 446–452 (2004) 85Fluorescence imaging

Lidke, D.S. et al. Quantum dot ligands provide new insights into erbB/HER receptor-mediated signaltransduction

Nat. Biotechnol. 22, 198–203(2004)

75

Gene therapy Silva, G.A. et al. Selective differentiation of neural progenitor cells by high-epitope density nanofibers Science 303, 1352–1355 (2004) 66Plant biotech Hirai, M.Y. et al. Integration of transcriptomics and metabolomics for understanding of global responses to

nutritional stresses in Arabidopsis thaliana Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101,10205–10210 (2004)

44

Environmentalbiotech

Heidelberg, J.F. et al. The genome sequence of the anaerobic, sulfate-reducing bacterium Desulfovibrio vulgaris Hildenborough

Nat. Biotechnol. 22, 554–559(2004)

38

Biosensors Patolsky, F. et al. Long-range electrical contacting of redox enzymes by SWCNT connectors Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 43,2113–2117 (2004)

35

Nuclear transfer Kolber-Simonds, D.et al.

Production of alpha-1,3-galactosyltransferase null pigs by means of nuclear transfer with fibroblasts bearing loss of heterozygosity mutations

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101,7335–7340 (2004)

30

Source: ISI Web of Knowledge, as of March 14

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