Bibliometrics

Forging through the vast forests of information available today, I am impressed by the thousands of brilliant minds working tirelessly to improve our lives through technology. I am also bewildered and overwhelmed at times. How does a bibliographic researcher like me determine which articles are the most significant in a given field?

One answer is … bibliometrics. Wikipedia defines bibliometrics as “a set of methods used to study or measure texts and information. Citation analysis and content analysis are commonly used bibliometric methods. While bibliometric methods are most often used in the field of library and information science, bibliometrics have wide applications in other areas. In fact, many research fields use bibliometric methods to explore the impact of their field[1], the impact of a set of researchers, or the impact of a particular paper.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliometrics)

The best known bibliometric application is the Web of Science, produced by the Institute for Scientific Information. The service allows users to search forward in time from a known article to more recent publications which cite the known item. Theoretically, a seminal article will be cited more frequently than other articles on the same topic.

If you are lucky enough to belong to a company that subscribes to Web of Science (http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/scientific/Web_of_Science), contact your corporate librarian for information on how to use it.

Failing that, you can get a tantalizing taste of the power of bibliometrics by visiting AuthorMapper (http://www.authormapper.com/about.aspx). On the AuthorMapper site you can conduct a free search on any key word of interest to you. The results include specific cites, as well as a literal map of the location of the authors of the cited articles. It also tells you which institutions and which journals contain the largest number of the cited articles. With this information, you may want to target a specific institution or journal for further research.

By way of example, I did a quick search on “dibenzothiophene.” A few of the results appear below.

Search Results
417 Articles
1502 Authors
537 Institutions
79 Journals
Showing 1 to 10 of 417 matching Articles

Biotechnology of desulfurization of diesel: prospects and challenges
Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology (2005) 66:356-366, January 01, 2005
By Gupta, Nidhi; Roychoudhury, P. K.; Deb, J. K.

To meet stringent emission standards stipulated by regulatory agencies, the oil industry is required to make a huge investment to bring down the sulfur content in diesel to the desired level, using conventional hydrodesulfurization (HDS) technology, by which sulfur is catalytically converted to hydrogen sulfide in the presence of hydrogen. These reactions proceed rapidly only at high temperature and pressure and therefore the capital cost as well as the operating cost associated with HDS very high. Biological desulfurization has the potential of being developed as a viable technology downstream of classical HDS. Various attempts have been made to develop biotechnological processes based on microbiological desulfurization employing aerobic and anaerobic bacteria. However, there are several bottlenecks limiting commercialization of the process. This review discusses various aspects of microbial desulfurization and the progress made towards its commercialization.
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Desulphurisation of benzothiophene and dibenzothiophene by actinomycete organisms belonging to the genus Rhodococcus, and related taxa
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1998) 74:119-132, October 01, 1998
By Oldfield, Christopher; Wood, Nicola T.; Gilbert, Steven C.; Murray, Frazer D.; Faure, Fabrice R. Show all (5)

Desulphurising enzymes remove the sulphur moiety from an organosulphur molecule leaving the carbon skeleton intact. Two kinds of desulphurisation reaction are recognised. The dibenzothiophene (DBT)-specific pathway desulphurises DBT to inorganic sulphite and 2- hydroxybiphenyl (HBP), and the benzothiophene (BTH)-specific pathway desulphurises BTH to 2-(2′-hydroxyphenyl)ethan 1-al (HPEal) and probably inorganic sulphite. The DBT-desulphurisation pathway was originally identified in Rhodococcus erythropolis strain IGTS8 (ATCC 53968), and the BTH-desulphurisation pathway in Gordonia sp. strain 213E (NCIMB 40816). These organisms do not further metabolise the organic product of desulphurisation.

In this article current knowledge of the biochemistry and genetics of the desulphurisation enzymes is reviewed. The need for separate, DBT- and BTH-specific desulphurisation routes is rationalised in terms of the chemical differences between the two compounds. The desulphurisation pathway is compared with other microbial DBT- degrading enzyme systems. Finally some comments are made concerning the application of desulphurisation enzymes for fuel desulphurisation and on the relevance of these enzymes to the ecology of the mycolata (sensu Chun et al, 1996).
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