April 2009  (from the Apr. 30, Thomson Reuters Newsletter)

Science Watch takes its annual look back at the hottest of recent research.

Science Watch from Thomson Reuters tracks trends and performance in basic research year-round. In this highly anticipated annual review, it identifies researchers who accounted for the highest numbers of Hot Papers published over the preceding two years from 2008. It also highlights which papers published during 2008 were the most cited by year’s end.

Kuo-Chen Chou of the Gordon Life Sciences Institute and Shanghai Jiao Tong University tops the Hot Paper rankings, with 17 published since 2007 covering a variety of sequencing tools for predicting protein location. Thirteen of these reports were co-authored with another of the featured scientists, Hong-Bin Shen.

The list of 2008’s most-cited papers is striking for the prominence of physical-sciences reports in the top spots—especially those on iron-based superconductors, a topic that accounts for the number one paper and three others in the top ten. Theoretical physics, and specifically string theory, also registers strongly, with several papers examining recent refinements to M-theory.

The hottest research of 2007-08: read the full analysis