The hottest papers in Mars science over the past decade are
dominated by the great Mars missions of the era, and the meteorite
known as Allan Hills 84001 (ALH84001). Four of the top 20
papers,
including the number one paper, discuss the possibility of relic
biogenic activity in the meteorite—i.e., the signs of life on Mars.
Despite the copious citations to paper #1, these signs have not
fulfilled the early promise and excitement. The other hot papers of
the decade report on the surface composition, magnetic field,
topography, thermal emissions, and evidence for water on the red
planet, using instruments from the Mars Global Surveyor Mission and
Mars Pathfinder.
Over the past two years, the evidence for relic biogenic activity
in ALH84001 has faltered under investigation in several of the top 20
papers, although evidence for ancient Martian magnetic fields
persists. The very hottest papers published in the past two years stay
on the theme of life on Mars and report on evidence for hydrogen and
water in subsurface soil and ice, using neutron- and gamma-ray
detectors from the Mars Odyssey mission. Other hot papers discuss the
evidence for Martian water in surface features, the morphology and
composition of the Mars surface and the relationship between disparate
surface features, as well as between Martian gravity and topography.
One paper discusses the observation of a planet-encircling dust storm,
while several papers in both lists review what we’ve learned about
Mars from the collection of Martian meteorites tossed Earthward.
Methodology
To construct this database,
papers were extracted based on title-supplied keywords for Mars. The keywords used were as follows:
The baseline time span for this database
is 1993-2004 (second bimonthly). The resulting database contained 3,763 (10 years)
and 1,024 (2 years & 4 months) papers; 5,259 authors; 52 countries;
607 journals; and 1,266 institutions.
Rankings
Once the database was in place,
it was used to generate the lists of top 20 papers (two years & 4
months, and ten years
periods), authors, journals,
institutions, and nations, covering a time span of 1994-2004 (second
bimonthly).
The top 20 papers are ranked
according to total cites. Rankings for author, journal, institution,
and country are listed in three ways: according to total cites, total
papers, and total cites/paper. The paper thresholds used to determine
scientist, institution, country, and journal rankings according to
total cites/paper were as follows: 17, 16, 9, and 6, respectively. These
thresholds correspond to the top 1% of authors, 5% of institutions, 50% of countries and
10% of journals by total papers.
