Lab Times
Ranking
4-2012
Publication Analysis 1999-2010
Aging Research
England scored best in European aging research. The big surprise, however, is Italy following in second place with
total citations. The highest average citation rates were achieved by the Scandinavian duo, Denmark and Norway.
M
any proclaim that aging research has only recently
emerged as a distinct research discipline. Actually, “aging research” is quite old and started more than a hundred years ago.
In 1903, Elie Metchnikoff from the Pasteur Institute of Paris,
who five years later together with Paul Ehrlich received the Nobel
Prize for their research on cellular immunology, introduced the
term “gerontology”. The background was that he and others had
recognised that the health of the Western populations was undergoing a change from domination by infectious diseases to chronic diseases. Additionally, at the same time, the notion had already
dawned that degenerative diseases were a manifestation of the
process of aging.
Since then, a small but constant number of scientists have
continuously been dedicating their efforts towards the biomedical mechanisms and problems of aging. Nevertheless, “gerontology” as a whole remained a small niche of life science research for
quite a long time – due to a variety of reasons, which interestingly
also included some religious and philosophical convictions.
“The aging society”
Therefore, it took until the mid-1970s, when the elevation of
the Section on Aging to the National Institute on Aging within the
US-National Institutes of Health constituted a landmark in the
growing support of research on aging. Gerontology was finally
coming of age and has since then experienced a sharp rise. Aging
research institutes were founded all over in order to investigate
the biomedical (and other) aspects of what is now summarised
under the catchphrase “the aging society”. Accordingly, the over-
all citations of biomedical aging research articles more than doubled in the time span 2001 to 2008.
Given this background of a highly dynamic though also very
diverse research discipline, this publication analysis of European
aging research seems very overdue.
A highly dynamic field
But before delving deeper into the analysis, one “technical”
point must be clarified. Many of the “top papers” on aging research are, indeed, published in multidisciplinary journals like
Nature, Science or The Lancet. Nevertheless, we had to restrict a
certain part of the analysis to the 45 expert journals listed in the
subject category “Gerontology & Geriatry” of Thomson Reuters’
database Web of Science, which was used for this analysis. The
reason is that Web of Science doesn’t provide any sufficiently reliable tools to automatically extract relevant aging research articles
from those multidisciplinary journals. Of course, as a result, some
of the most prominent papers in the field have been omitted from
the performance analysis of individual countries (see tables p.
33). Despite this limitation, however, we believe that a survey,
restricted to the specialist journals only, still provides sufficiently valid indicators for the countries’ overall productivity in aging
research. On the contrary, rankings of the most-cited researchers and papers (see tables, p. 34) could be analysed from publications in all journals.
Given this directive, let’s have a look at how the European publication output in aging research during the period 19992010 is allocated among the individual European countries. The
fact that England emerges as the “winner” in terms of article
Photo: Chip Fotowelt/muc1977
page 32
Ranking
numbers and overall citations isn’t really unexpected. A big surprise, however, is the second place for Italy, thus pushing Germany, the “usual European life science silver medallist”, back into
third place. Perhaps interesting in this respect: With an average of
82 years, the Italians, together with Iceland, have the highest life
expectancy out of all European countries. Unlikely though, that
there is any correlation to the strong Italian performance in aging research.
The Netherlands and Sweden also impressed by achieving places 4 and 5 in terms of total citations, which, in turn, was
at the cost of usually higher ranking France and Spain. Slightly higher ranks than in most other life science disciplines were,
furthermore, achieved by Finland (9th), Israel (10th) and Ireland
(15th); Scotland (13th), on the other hand, performed a little lower than usual.
When it comes to average citation rates, it is two Scandinavian countries that have climbed to the top, Denmark with
13.3 citations per article, followed by Norway with 12.4. Behind
that couple, their neighbours Belgium (11.7) and The Netherlands (11.3) occupied the next places. Sweden (10.6) completed
the Scandinavian trio in fifth place; with Italy and France (both
10.5), the first two of the so-called bigger research nations, coming in only marginally behind.
Falling short of the US
And beyond the European borders? When compared to their
US colleagues, the European performance in the expert journals for aging research altogether fell unusually short of the corresponding US output: 25,400 vs. 44,600 articles and 224,000
vs. 322,000 in terms of total citations. At least, the “Europeans”
scored a higher average citation rate: 8.8 vs. 7.2.
Japan, whose population enjoys the greatest longevity worldwide, on the other hand, did not exactly impress by high publication and citation scores in aging research: the first five of the European countries list achieved higher total citation numbers.
When looking at the most-cited heads of European aging research two things become immediately obvious: their high citation counts and the diversity of field. Both aspects, of course, are
interconnected in various ways. First of all, aging research certainly is a big topic for epidemiologic and public health studies,
which inherently attract a wealth of citations – a fact, for example, represented by the top placings of Albert Hofmann (1st) and
Kay-Tee Khaw (4th). The same is true for the major topic of age-related diseases, in general, and dementia, in particular. About half
of the 30 most-cited European aging researchers can be attributed to this field, as, for example, the two Swedish clinical neuroscientists Bengt Winblad (2nd) and Kaj Blennow (3rd) or the molecular biologist Konrad Beyreuther (13th).
Furthermore, five “heads” of the list have focussed their work
on molecular and cellular aspects of normal aging, among them
Spanish telomere specialist Maria Blasco (9th) and Italian immunoaging expert Claudio Franceschi (10th); two more colleagues,
Brenda Penninx (11th) and Aartjan Beekman (25th), investigate
psychiatric disorders of the elderly; and with Steven Boonen
(30th), finally a clinical specialist for age-related osteoporosis also
climbed the list.
Last but not least, there is another striking fact lighting up the
“top 30”-list: ten of them are women. This is by far the highest
proportion of female scientists in all life science disciplines analysed, so far.
Ralf Neumann
4-2012
.
Lab Times
page 33
Europe...
Country
1. England
2. Italy
3. Germany
4. Netherlands
5. Sweden
6. France
7. Spain
8. Switzerland
9. Finland
10. Israel
11. Belgium
12. Denmark
13. Austria
14. Scotland
15. Ireland
16. Norway
17. Wales
18. Poland
19. Greece
20. Turkey
Citations
Articles
Cit./Art.
54,490
37,665
30,915
26,239
19,587
18,461
11,836
9,679
8,541
8,118
8,094
7,816
5,339
5,299
5,015
4,757
3,105
2,471
2,195
2,191
6,215
3,593
3,456
2,318
1,849
1,753
1,200
1,003
847
1,095
695
588
536
627
496
385
411
391
289
370
8.8
10.5
9.0
11.3
10.6
10.5
9.9
9.7
10.1
7.4
11.7
13.3
10.0
8.5
10.1
12.4
7.6
6.3
7.6
5.9
Articles appearing between 1999 and 2010 in ‘aging research
journals’ as listed by SCImago and Thomson Reuters’ Web of
Science. The citation numbers are accurate as of May 2012. A
country’s figures are derived from articles, where at least one author working in the respective European nation is included in the
authors’ list. Israel is included because it is a member of many
European research organisations and programmes (EMBO, FP7 of
the EU...).
... and the World
Citations
Articles
Cit./Art.
Europe
224,314
25,394
8.8
USA
Canada
Australia
Japan
China
South Korea
322,402
36,347
24,251
18,790
6,550
5,225
44,556
4,190
2,813
2,856
1,117
886
7.2
8.7
8.6
6.6
5.9
5.9
page 34
Lab Times
Ranking
4-2012
Publication Analysis 1999-2010 – Aging Research
Most Cited Authors...
Cit- Artations icles
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
Albert Hofmann, Epidemiol. Erasmus Med. Ctr. Rotterdam
Bengt Winblad, Aging Res. Ctr. Neurobiol. Karolinska Inst. Stockholm
Kaj Blennow, Neurosci. & Physiol. Sahlgrenska Acad. Gothenburg Univ.
Kay-Tee Khaw, Clin. Gerontol. Unit Sch. Clin. Med. Univ. Cambridge
Philip Scheltens, Alzheimer Ctr. Free Univ. Amsterdam Med. Ctr.
Ian G. McKeith, Inst. Ageing and Health Newcastle Univ.
John T. O’Brien, Inst. Ageing and Health Newcastle Univ.
Rudi G.J. Westendorp, Gerontol. & Geriatr. Leiden Univ. Med. Ctr.
Maria A. Blasco, Spanish Natl. Canc. Res. Ctr. (CNIO) Madrid
Claudio Franceschi, Exp Pathol. Univ. Bologna
Brenda W.J.H. Penninx, Psychiatry Free Univ. Med. Ctr., Amsterdam
Nick C. Fox, Dementia Res. Ctr., Inst.Neurol. Univ. Coll. London
Konrad Beyreuther, Ctr. Mol. Biol. Univ. Heidelberg
Laura Fratiglioni, Aging Res. Ctr. Neurobiol. Karolinska Inst. Stockholm
Hilkka Soininen, Neurol. Univ. Hosp. Kuopio
Michael N. Hall, Biocenter Univ. Basel
Harald Hampel, Psychiatr. Univ. Hosp. Frankfurt
Jelle Jolles, Educational Neurosci. Free Univ. Amsterdam
Hermann Brenner, Aging Res. German Canc. Res. Ctr. Heidelberg
Dag Aarsland, Ctr. Age-Related Med. Univ. Hosp. Stavanger
Carol Brayne, Publ. Health Univ. Cambridge
Heiko Braak, Clin. Neuroanat. Univ. Ulm
Marjolein Visser, Health Sci. Free Univ. Amsterdam
Ian D. Hickson, Cell. & Mol. Biol. Ctr. Healthy Aging Univ. Copenhagen
Aartjan T.F. Beekman, Gen. Pract. Free Univ. Med. Ctr., Amsterdam
Linda Partridge, Max Planck Inst. Biol. of Aging Cologne
Dorly J.H. Deeg, EMGO-Inst. Free Univ. Med. Ctr. Amsterdam
Agneta Nordberg, Alzheimer Neurobiol. Ctr. Karolinska Inst. Stockholm
Wulf Dröge, German Cancer Res. Ctr. Heidelberg († 2010)
Steven Boonen, Gerontol. & Geriatr. Cath. Univ. Leuven
... and Papers
34,363
17,585
15,244
14,611
11,569
10,754
10,315
9,713
9,157
8,983
8,977
8,651
8,553
8,496
8,278
7,833
7,591
7,481
7,401
7,387
7,362
7,336
7,210
7,080
6,887
6,677
6,616
6,566
6,000
5,998
745
417
358
387
294
190
208
274
132
276
199
200
131
131
209
57
188
236
320
122
180
113
125
104
231
119
186
121
58
175
Albert Hofmann (1.)
Kaj Blennow (3.)
Maria Blasco (9.)
Hilkka Soininen (15.)
Bengt Winblad (2.)
Kay-Tee Khaw (4.)
Claudio Franceschi (10.)
Linda Partridge (26.)
Citations of articles published between 1999 and 2010
were recorded up until May 2012 using the Web of Science database from Thomson Reuters. The “most-cited papers” had correspondence addresses in Europe or Israel.
1. Good, CD; Johnsrude, IS; Ashburner, J; Henson, RNA; Friston, KJ; Frackowiak, RSJ
A voxel-based morphometric study of ageing in 465 normal adult human brains.
NEUROIMAGE 14 (1): 21-36 JUL 2001
2. Shepherd, J; Blauw, GJ; Murphy, MB; [...]; Sweeney, BJ; Twomey, C; Westendorp, RGJ
Pravastatin in elderly individuals at risk of vascular disease (PROSPER): a randomised controlled trial .
LANCET 360 (9346): 1623-30 NOV 23 2002
3. Ferri, CP; Prince, M; Brayne, C; [...]; Fratiglioni, L; [...]; Menezes, PR; Rimmer, E; Scazufca, M
Global prevalence of dementia: a Delphi consensus study.
LANCET 366 (9503): 2112-17 DEC-JAN 2005
4. Trifunovic, A; Wredenberg, A; Falkenberg, M; [...]; Tornell, J; Jacobs, HT; Larsson, NG
Premature ageing in mice expressing defective mitochondrial DNA polymerase.
NATURE 429 (6990): 417-23 MAY 27 2004
5. Clancy, DJ; Gems, D; Harshman, LG; Oldham, S; Stocker, H; Hafen, E; Leevers, SJ; Partridge, L
Extension of life-span by loss of CHICO, a Drosophila insulin receptor substrate protein.
SCIENCE 292 (5514): 104-6 APR 6 2001
Citations
1,683
1,398
1,154
774
626