Article ID: CBB000933112

Revisiting the “Quiet Debut” of the Double Helix: A Bibliometric and Methodological note on the “Impact” of Scientific Publications (2010)

unapi

The object of this paper is two-fold: first, to show that contrary to what seem to have become a widely accepted view among historians of biology, the famous 1953 first Nature paper of Watson and Crick on the structure of DNA was widely cited -- as compared to the average paper of the time -- on a continuous basis from the very year of its publication and over the period 1953--1970 and that the citations came from a wide array of scientific journals. A systematic analysis of the bibliometric data thus shows that Watson's and Crick's paper did in fact have immediate and long term impact if we define impact in terms of comparative citations with other papers of the time. In this precise sense it did not fall into relative oblivion in the scientific community. The second aim of this paper is to show, using the case of the reception of the Watson--Crick and Jacob--Monod papers as concrete examples, how large scale bibliometric data can be used in a sophisticated manner to provide information about the dynamic of the scientific field as a whole instead of limiting the analysis to a few major actors and generalizing the result to the whole community without further ado.

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Authors & Contributors
ByrneSim, Bay Lauris
Alomepe, Beverly S.
Antrim, Amelia F.
He, Yi
Yen, G.
Wu, Zheng
Concepts
DNA; RNA
Molecular biology
Genetics
Bibliometrics
Historiography
Citation analysis
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
20th century
20th century, early
19th century
Places
England
United States
Institutions
Human Genome Project
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