Natural Science Forum / Biology / Biology / January 2005

It sounds like someone has a school assignment to do!

Biology is an incredibly broad field.  The best journals in
Biochemistry and not the same as the best journals in Ecology or
Developmental Biology or whatever.  The same for the best biologists.

There is also an enormous difference between the most "famous"
biologist and the one doing the greatest research.

No, I did not answer your questions.

I second RN's post; the question is very broad/vague.

There is a company that keeps track of statistics on how articles are
cited by others. This leads to a classification scheme, of both
journals and authors, by how cited they are. The company that does
this used to be called Institute for Scientific Information; I think
they are now part of Thomson Learning. See if you can find their web
site. Or Google on "citation analysis biology", or such.

caution... Such analyses may have something to do with quality or
importance, but it is a complex relationship. Importantly, citation
rates can be very different in different fields, so use great caution
in making any comparisons from one field to another. Nevertheless,
looking at a range of citation data can at least give you some food
for thought. Since we have no idea the purpose of your inquiry, let's
leave it at that for now.

bob