nature biotechnology volume 27 number 9 september 2009 789

tific fields from 1999–2009, Harvard continues to dominate in terms of output, with the Max Planck Society and Johns Hopkins second and third, respectively. China and India continue to increase their number of biotech papers, the latter leapfrogging Japan in output.

The number of papers describing small RNAs continues to grow rap-idly. Other fields, such as proteomics, nanotech and systems biology, continued to expand, but fewer papers were published on cancer stem cells in 2008 than in the previous 2 years. When looking at all scien-

Trends in biotech literature 2008Andrew Marshall

Andrew Marshall is Editor, Nature Biotechnology

Biotech journal impactPrimary research journal Impact factorNature Biotechnology 22.3Nature Chemical Biology 14.6Cell Stem Cell 12.3Genome Research 10.2Molecular Systems Biology 12.2PNAS 9.4Molecular and Cellular Proteomics 8.8Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics 7.6Review journal Impact factorNature Reviews Drug Discovery 28.7Pharmacological Reviews 21.9Annual Review of Pharmacology 21.6Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering 10.8Current Opinion in Biotechnology 7.5Trends in Biotechnology 6.6Source: ISI

Top cited paper by field

Field Author Title CitationTimes cited

Genomic medicine Burton, P.R. et al.

Genome-wide association study of 14,000 cases of seven common dis-eases and 3,000 shared controls

Nature 447, 661–678 (2007)

1,256

Epigenomics Barski, A. et al. High-resolution profiling of histone methylations in the human genome

Cell 129, 823–837 (2007)

466

iPS cells Okita, K. et al. Generation of germline-competent induced pluripotent stem cells

Nature 448, 313–317 (2007)

438

Cancer stem cells O’Brien, C.A. et al.

A human colon cancer cell capable of initiating tumour growth in immunode-ficient mice

Nature 445, 106–110 (2007)

414

Proteomics Elias, J.E. & Gygi, S.P.

Target-decoy search strategy for increased confidence in large-scale protein identifications by mass spectrometry

Nature Methods 3, 207–214 (2007)

223

Environmental biotechnology

Rusch, D.B. et al.

The Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling expedition: Northwest Atlantic through Eastern Tropical Pacific

PLoS Biology 5, 398–431 (2007)

205

Diagnostics Liu, R. et al. The prognostic role of a gene signature from tumorigenic breast-cancer cells.

New England Journal of Medicine 356, 217–226 (2007)

198

Stem cells De Coppi, P. et al.

Isolation of amniotic stem cell lines with potential for therapy

Nature Biotechnology 25, 100–106 (2007)

173

Plant biotech Jaillon, O. et al. The grapevine genome sequence suggests ancestral hexaploidization in major angiosperm phyla

Nature 449, 463–467 (2007)

173

Imaging Lee, J.H. et al. Artificially engineered magnetic nanoparticles for ultra-sensitive molecular imaging

Nature Medicine 13, 95–99 (2007)

141

Next-generation sequencing

Korbel, J.O. et al.

Paired-end mapping reveals extensive structural variation in the human genome

Science 318, 420–426 (2007)

136

Nanobiotechnology Liu, Z. et al. In vivo biodistribution and highly efficient tumour targeting of carbon nanotubes in mice

Nature Nanotechnology 2, 47–52 (2007)

120

Industrial biotechnology Pel, H.J. et al. Genome sequencing and analysis of the versatile cell factory Aspergillus niger CBS 513.88

Nature Biotechnology 25, 221–231 (2007)

116

Synthetic biology Tumpey, T.M. et al.

A two-amino acid change in the hemag-glutinin of the 1918 influenza virus abolishes transmission

Science 315, 655–659 (2007)

70

Source: ISI

Number of biotech journal articles by region China and India continued their rapid growth, the latter overtaking Japan’s output in papers.

Most cited institutionsThe top 20 institutions over all fields comprise 14 universities in the US, three in the UK, and one each in Canada, Japan and Germany

Source: Science Watch, Thomson

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

Historical trends in biotech fieldsProteomics, nanotech and RNAi continued rapid growth, with the increase in microRNA papers particularly pronounced. Cancer stem cell papers decreased.

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

0 500,000 1,000,000 1,500,000 2,000,000 2,500,000 3,000,000

2,597,7861,366,087

1,222,1661,147,2831,138,795

1,077,069948,621945,817939,302931,399913,896899,832

861,243860,117858,073833,467832,439811,673

766,577760,091

University of WisconsinUniversity of Oxford

University of CambridgeMIT

Yale UniversityColumbia University

University College LondonUniversity of Toronto

UC San DiegoUniversity of Tokyo

University of PennsylvaniaUC San Francisco

UC BerkeleyUniversity of Michigan

UC Los AngelesStanford

University of WashingtonJohns Hopkins

Max Planck SocietyHarvard University

Average citations per paper

2720232123201720262013221618202324191915

Number of papers (1999-2009)0 500 1,000 1,500 2,000 2,500 3,000 3,500

2005

2006

2007

2008

European Union

China

USA

India

Japan

United Kingdom

Germany

Italy

Autralia

South Korea

Finland

Poland

The Netherlands

Canada

Spain

Sweden

Cou

ntry

Number of papers

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

4,000

4,500

Cancer stem cellsmiRNAMetabolomics

ES and iPS cellsSystems biology

PharmacogenomicsNanotechnology

AntisenseProteomics

RNA interferenceGene therapy

2001

Num

ber

of p

aper

s

Year200720062005200420032002 2008

DATA PAGE©

2009

Nat

ure

Am

eric

a, In

c. A

ll ri

gh

ts r

eser

ved

.