The graphic designer and the writer: Beshoy Emad
Science is an incremental process. Small discoveries help to build larger applications that enhance our knowledge in a variety of fields. For science to be spread papers, articles and journals are published in science magazines and they are globally illustrated. This principle is so called science communication. It is when scientists have to deliver their discoveries to the society.
The measure of the success of a paper is the no. of citations it gets. As it represents the quality and necessity of a paper in a specific field of study. And are often used as a rough measure of a paper’s importance.
By the way, citation is a definition that is given to the earlier work included in a paper. A method by which authors acknowledge the source of their methods, ideas and findings mentioned in previous work that help figuring out newer conclusions. Therefore, in 2014 Nature Published an article about the top 100 cited papers ever published. We will talk briefly about those of interest in the field of biology or biomedical sciences, which, by the way, dominated the list.
For a paper to be in the top 100 cited papers it should have at least 12000 citations. From another perspective, a paper receives average of one to 9 citations, and if it gets 100 citations, it will be already of the top few important papers ever published. Thus, in comparison, to exceed 10000 citations are really extra-ordinary.
Thomson Reuter’s, who helped to make the statistics to Nature, analyzed Web of Science that holds some 58 million items. If that corpus were scaled to Mount Kilimanjaro, then the 100 most-cited papers would represent just 1 centimetre at the peak. Only 14,499 papers — roughly a metre and a half’s worth — have more than 1,000 citations.
The oldest paper in the list was published in 1925 and the youngest in 2008 (according to the date when statistics were held). The decades of the most entries were 1980s. In terms of subjects, biology dominates the list 39% of all the papers describes techniques used in biology labs.
Top 6 scientific papers according to the statistics published in Nature in 2014 which will be even more by now:
Protein measurement with the folin phenol reagent (305148 Cs), by/ Oliver H. Lowry et al, which describes what is known now as Lowry assay. The word assay means the measurement of a particular substance within a sample. In this technique, Lowry measured the amount of protein within a sample using folin-phenol colorimetric reagent.
By the way, Colorimetry means measurement of wavelength and intensity of the electromagnetic radiation in the visible region of the spectrum (cause the sample to change in color). The more change in color of your sample, the more protein it contains. This paper is in the top because it describes a technique that is indispensable to bio-scientists as it is used all the time.
2. Cleavage of the structural proteins during the assembly of the head of the bacteriophage T4 (213005 Cs), By U. K. Laemmli et al. It describes an improvement to the technique called STS that separates out mixture of proteins by their weight. Again it describes a major laboratory technique that everyone uses.
3. A rapid and sensitive method for quantitation of microgram quantities of protein utilizing the principle of protein-dye binding (155530 Cs), By Marion M. Bradford et al. It is a different way in measuring protein in a sample.
4. DNA sequencing with chain-terminating inhibitors (65335 Cs), it is about Sanger sequencing, one of the early methods of sequencing DNA. It helps to work out the arrangement of the nitrogenous bases A C T G in order in the DNA strand. Frederick Sanger is one of the four people to have two Nobel Prizes: one for this work and the other for sequencing proteins.
5.Single-step method in RNA isolation by acid guanidinium thiocyanate-phenol-chloroform extraction (60397 Cs), this paper was the first to describe a technique to isolate the RNA, the cooler less stable sapling form of the DNA.
6.Electrophoretic transfer of proteins from polyacrylamide gels to nitrocellulose sheets: procedure and some applications (53349 Cs), it describes a now-known technique as Western blot. It is used to identify a specific protein within a mix.
What else is in the top 100 papers?? But, let’s see what is Not in the top 100 papers?? If you have heard of a great scientific breakthrough, it is probably not in this list!! The discovery of high-temperature superconductors, the determination of DNA’s double-helix structure, the first observations that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating — all of these breakthroughs won Nobel prizes and international acclaim. Yet none of the papers that announced them come anywhere close to ranking among the 100 most highly cited papers of all time ,for example the discovery of DNA.
That is because this list describes methods with few notable exceptions. By contrast, papers of their discoveries (the discovery of the science behind a technique) are not cited so often. That is the problem of comparing the merits of different papers just by the number of citations they received.
The shortest paper in that list is Addendum, by Andrew Feinberg: which is a single page research that described a slightly improved method of keeping track of enzymes which interacts with DNA.
Bazar inclusion of paper in the list is about: The assessment of handedness to identify if the patient is left handed or right handed!! Seem weird, isn’t it? This list is brilliant as it demonstrates how science is done? Biologists love assays as it seems.
Science is done in incremental way step by step, paper after paper. Isaac Newton once said that we can only see far by standing on the shoulder of giants. Which is theoretically wrong as it depends on the long chain of the continuous incremental discoveries? Science is the ultimate human endeavor made by humans for the best of human kind.
References
THE TOP 100 PAPERS: Nature explores the most-cited research of all time. Nature brief article.
Towbin H, Staehelin T, Gordon J. Electrophoretic transfer of proteins from polyacrylamide gels to nitrocellulose sheets: procedure and some applications. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1979 Sep;76(9):4350-4. doi: 10.1073/pnas.76.9.4350. PMID: 388439; PMCID: PMC411572.
Chomczynski P, Sacchi N. Single-step method of RNA isolation by acid guanidinium thiocyanate-phenol-chloroform extraction. Anal Biochem. 1987 Apr;162(1):156-9. doi: 10.1006/abio.1987.9999. PMID: 2440339.
Sanger F, Nicklen S, Coulson AR. DNA sequencing with chain-terminating inhibitors. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1977 Dec;74(12):5463-7. doi: 10.1073/pnas.74.12.5463. PMID: 271968; PMCID: PMC431765.
Bradford MM. A rapid and sensitive method for the quantitation of microgram quantities of protein utilizing the principle of protein-dye binding. Anal Biochem. 1976 May 7;72:248-54. doi: 10.1006/abio.1976.9999. PMID: 942051.
Laemmli UK. Cleavage of structural proteins during the assembly of the head of bacteriophage T4. Nature. 1970 Aug 15;227(5259):680-5. doi: 10.1038/227680a0. PMID: 5432063.
LOWRY OH, ROSEBROUGH NJ, FARR AL, RANDALL RJ. Protein measurement with the Folin phenol reagent. J Biol Chem. 1951 Nov;193(1):265-75. PMID: 14907713.
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