The most-cited institutions and Journals

ScienceWatch.com has released a ranking of the top 20 institutions (out of over 4,000) which have attracted the highest total citations to their papers published in Thomson Reuters-indexed journals over 22 fields. This has been done using the data from Essential Science Indicators since January 1, 1999 to April 30, 2009 [The Most-Cited Institutions Overall, 1999-2009].

This includes the "Molecular Biology & Genetics" field, so we checked it out and bring it to you.

The top 20 institutions over all fields include 14 US-based universities, 3 UK-based universities, and one each in Canada, Japan, and Germany.

Considering all 22 fields, the 20 most-cited institutions are:

01 HARVARD UNIV
02 MAX PLANCK SOCIETY
03 JOHNS HOPKINS UNIV
04 UNIV WASHINGTON
05 STANFORD UNIV
06 UNIV CALIF LOS ANGELES
07 UNIV MICHIGAN
08 UNIV CALIF BERKELEY
09 UNIV CALIF SAN FRANCISCO
10 UNIV PENN
11 UNIV TOKYO
12 UNIV CALIF SAN DIEGO
13 UNIV TORONTO
14 UCL
15 COLUMBIA UNIV
16 YALE UNIV
17 MIT
18 UNIV CAMBRIDGE
19 UNIV OXFORD
20 UNIV WISCONSIN

Interestingly, Harvard leads in 9 of the 22 fields, including "Molecular Biology & Genetics".

Harvard's citation strengths lie in biological and health sciences: the top five fields in their the citation record are Clinical Medicine, Molecular Biology & Genetics, Biology & Biochemistry, Neuroscience & Behavior, and Immunology.

The Max Planck Society ranks #2 overall and #2 in the "Molecular Biology & Genetics" and also in the "Biology & Biochemistry" sub-categories.

And on a personal note... Wisconsin rules!

Now, regarding journals, the top 10 most-cited (during the same period, 1999-2009) in all fields are:

1 Journal of Biological Chemistry
2 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA (PNAS)
3 Nature
4 Science
5 Physical Review Letters
6 J. American Chemical Society
7 Physical Review B
8 Astrophysical Journal
9 New England Journal of Medicine
10 Applied Physics Letters

[Source: Top Ten Most-Cited Journals (All Fields), 1999-2009]

Note that this has not been normalized in any way, and just reflects the total number of citations.

If you divide the total number of citations by the number of articles published in those journals, you get the following ranking:

01. New England Journal of Medicine
02. Science
03. Nature
04. PNAS
05. JBC
06. J. American Chemical Society
07. Physical Review Letters
08. Astrophysical Journal
09. Applied Physics Letters
10. Physical Review B

[Image credit: The NAD group]