The Most
Cited Books in Analytical Chemistry lthough journals are the primary source of research information, books are an immense depository of acquired knowledge in the sciences and other fields of scholarship (1, 2). According to Garvey, “Books seem to play a dual role in providing … information: On the one hand, they are effective in providing general information needed to formulate a scientific solution and on the other, specific information needed to choose a data-analysis technique” (3). However, it is increasingly difficult to assess the role of books in the contemporary system that disseminates scientific information. According to statistics from the 1950s and 1960s, books accounted for 10% of the references in the “hard” sciences (i.e., chemistry and physics) and 50% in the social science journal ar-
A survey of references in analytical chemistry over the past decade shows the importance of books.
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Tibor Braun Loránd Eötvös University and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
András Schubert Gábor Schubert Hungarian Academy of Sciences
ticles, respectively (4, 5). Yet, from The top-cited book is the classic to be cited than journals. 1980 to 1999, only ~3% of the The need to cite previously 370,000 total number of refer- Electrochemical Methods. published work arises from a cogences cited in analytical chemistry nitive and ethical framework. In articles were to books. Each cited the cognitive role, references proitem (without considering its age) received an average of 1.5 ci- vide a historical context to the work and direct readers to other tations in analytical chemistry during the past 20 years, whether sources. The ethical framework exists because references repay they were journal articles or books. However, the share of books intellectual debts through public acknowledgment. Citations in the total amount of analytical chemistry literature ranges also, in part, deal with problems of “property rights” and priorsomewhere between 0.6% (Analytical Abstracts data) and 1.5% ity claim issues that may eventually involve patents or commer(Chemical Abstracts data). Thus, books are 2–5 times less likely cial products.
Table 1. The 25 most cited books in analytical chemistry (1980–1999). Author
Bibliographic data
Number of citations
Bard, A. J.; Faulkner, L. R.
Electrochemical Methods: Fundamentals and Applications; Wiley: New York, 1980.
374
Snyder, L. R.; Kirkland, J. J.
Introduction to Modern Liquid Chromatography; Wiley: New York, 1979 (first published 1974).
167
Ruzicka, J.; Hansen, E. H.
Flow Injection Analysis; Wiley: New York, 1988 (first published 1981).
156
Malinowski, E. R.; Howery, D. G.
Factor Analysis in Chemistry; Wiley-Interscience: New York, 1991 (first published 1980).
120
Adams, R. N.
Electrochemistry at Solid Electrodes; Dekker: New York, 1969.
113
Bevington, Ph. R.
Data Reduction and Error Analysis for the Physical Sciences; McGraw-Hill: New York, 1969 (with D. K. Robinson, 1992).
95
Draper, N. R.; Smith, H.
Applied Regression Analysis; Wiley: New York, 1966 (first published 1981).
87
Press, W. H.
Numerical Recipes in FORTRAN: The Art of Scientific Computing; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1992 (Numerical Recipes in FORTRAN 77, 1996).
87
Lakowitz, J. R.
Principles of Fluorescence Spectroscopy; Plenum Press: New York, 1999 (first published 1983).
85
Giddings, J. C.
Dynamics of Chromatography; Dekker: New York, 1965.
65
Snyder, L. R.
Principles of Adsorption Chromatography: The Separation of Nonionic Organic Compounds; Dekker: New York, 1968.
63
Giddings, J. C.
Unified Separation Science; Wiley: New York, 1991.
60
Morf, W. E.
The Principles of Ion-Selective Electrodes and of Membrane Transport; Elsevier: Amsterdam, 1981.
60
McLafferty, F. W.
Interpretation of Mass Spectra: An Introduction; Benjamin: New York, 1966; University Science Books: Mill Valley, CA, 1993.
58
Harrison, A. G.
Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometry; CRC Press: Boca Raton, FL, 1992 (first published 1983).
57
Martens, H.; Naes, T.
Multivariate Calibration; Wiley: Chichester, NY, 1989.
57
Karger, B. L.; Snyder, L. R.; Horváth, Cs.
An Introduction to Separation Science; Wiley: New York, 1973.
51
Helfferich, F. G.
Ion Exchange; McGraw-Hill: New York, 1962; Dover: New York, 1995.
47
Kissinger, P. T.; Heineman, W. R.
Laboratory Techniques in Electroanalytical Chemistry; Dekker: New York, 1996 (first published 1984).
47
Ingle, Jr., J. D.; Crouch, S. R.
Spectrochemical Analysis; Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1988.
46
Wang, J.
Stripping Analysis: Principles, Instrumentation, and Applications; VCH: Deerfield Beach, FL, 1985.
45
Turner, A. P. F.; Karube, I.; Wilson, G. S.
Biosensors: Fundamentals and Applications; Oxford Univ. Press: Oxford, 1987.
43
Benninghoven, A.; Rüdenauer, F. G.; Werner, H. W.
Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry: Basic Concepts, Instrumental Aspects, Applications, and Trends; Wiley: New York, 1987.
40
Grossman, P. D.; Colburn, J. C.
Capillary Electrophoresis: Theory & Practice; Academic Press: San Diego, 1992.
40
Vogel, A. I.
A Textbook of Quantitative Inorganic Analysis, Including Elementary Instrumental Analysis; Wiley: New York, 1961 (first published 1939).
40
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Table 1 lists the 25 most cited books in analytical chemistry Table 2. Analytical chemistry “bestsellers” (1980–1999), arranged by numbers of citations. All monograph according to three Internet sources as of books were taken into account, irrespective of their topics. Not February 16, 2001. considered were handbooks, such as the CRC or Lange’s; rudiwww.amazon.com mentary textbooks; and collected volumes with multiple authors 1. D. A. Skoog et al. Fundamentals of Analytical Chemistry from which only single articles are usually cited, such as the ACS 2. M. Otto. Chemometrics: Statistics and Computer Applications in Symposium series. Analytical Chemistry 3. A. Manz and H. Becker, Eds. Microsystem Technology in ChemThe top cited book is the Bard–Faulkner classic, Electrochemistry and Life Sciences ical Methods. This study’s citation period covers the full lifetime 4. R. Willoughby et al. A Global View of LC/MS: How to Solve Your of this book, which was published in 1980. Impressively, a plot Most Challenging Analytical Problems of citation history for the book over the 20 years finds no sig5. G. Christian. Analytical Chemistry: Solutions Manual nificant decline in its use, and the new edition in 2000 will cerwww.eason.ie tainly give new impetus to authors to cite this classic work. 1. A. Dean. Analytical Chemistry Handbook The first editions of the 25 books listed in Table 1 were pub2. G. W. Ewing. Analytical Instrumentation: A Laboratory Guide for lished from 1939 to 1992, indicating that some books have long Chemical Analysis 3. D. Harvey. Modern Analytical Chemistry citation lifetimes. As an aside, surprisingly, the oldest book found 4. J. N. Miller. Modern Analytical Chemistry among the analytical chemistry references is the Codex German5. T. J. Bruno. Spectroscopic Methods icus published in 1350 (cited by A. Betteridge et al. Anal. Chem. www.chemistry.co.nz 1981, 53, 1064–1073). 1. F. W. McLafferty and F. Turecek. Interpretation of Mass Spectra According to the Science Citation Index (1980–1999), 8 of the 2. L. R. Snyder. Practical HPLC Method Development 25 books (Adams, Giddings, Grossman, Harrison, Ingle, Karger, 3. F. G. Kitson. Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry: A Kissinger, and Morf) have >10% of their total number of citations Practical Guide 4. D. C. Harris and M. C. Bertolucci. Symmetry and Spectroscopy: in analytical chemistry. At the other end of the scale, four books An Introduction to Vibrational and Electronic Spectroscopy (Bevington, Draper, Press, Vogel) have ≤1%. These four very fre5. B. D. Cullity. Elements of X-Ray Diffraction quently cited books are wide in scope; three are computational aids. Most of the 25 books had other analytical chemistry periodicals among their top 10 citing journals, with Analytica Chimica tentionally taken from three corners of the world, conspicuously Acta being the most frequent. Analytical chemistry books were have not a single common item. Many of the books in Table 2 also frequently cited in electrochemistry, physical chemistry, and were published in recent years, limiting their chances to get into the top 25 table, although the first item in the New Zealand list chemical physics journals. Many of the books in Table 1 fall into a few hot subfields of is a later edition of McLafferty and Turecek’s Interpretation of analytical chemistry, including chemometrics (Bevington, Drap- Mass Spectra in Table 1. er and Smith, Martens and Naes, Press), MS (Benninghoven et al., Harrison, Ingle and Crouch, McLafferty, Wang), electro- Tibor Braun is a professor at Loránd Eötvös University and Director of the Information Science and Scientoanalysis (Adams, Bard, Helfferich, metrics Research Unit (ISSRU) at the Kissinger and Heineman, Morf ), Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He separation science (Giddings, Kar- The first editions of the top is the Editor-in-Chief and founder of ger et al., Snyder), flow injection analysis (Ruzicka and Hansen), books have long citation times. the Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry and Scientometand capillary chromatography rics. András Schubert is a senior re(Grossman and Colburn). Wiley’s leading position (including VCH) among the publish- search fellow in the ISSRU. Gábor Schubert is a Ph.D. student in theoers, with 11 of the top 25, is not surprising; the company publish- retical chemistry at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the es the greatest number of analytical chemistry books according to Budapest University of Technology and Economics (Hungary). CorreAnalytical Abstracts (~20%) and Chemical Abstracts (~15%). On spondence should be addressed to Braun at P.O. Box 123, 1443 Buthe other hand, Elsevier’s underrepresentation with just one top- dapest, Hungary (
[email protected]). cited book (~10% in each database) in the list is surprising. Undoubtedly, citation statistics can give a rather restricted view of References the impact of the literature. Perhaps more than anything, it indicates (1) Riordon, J.; Zubritsky, E.; Newman, A. Anal. Chem. 2000, 72, 324 A. usage of the book and activity in the field. As Samuel Butler said (2) Braun, T.; Schubert, A.; Zsindely, S. TRAC 1998, 8, 1. about metaphors: “They are misleading, but they are less misleading (3) Garvey, W. D.; Tomita, K.; Woolf, P. The dynamic scientific-information than anything else.” Other book tracking options, like library use user. Appendix H in W. D. Garvey, Communication: The Essence of Science. statistics or sales statistics, lead to even less conclusive results. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1979; pp 256–279. For example, three analytical chemistry “bestseller” lists were (4) Brown, O. H. Scientific Serials, Monograph No. 16, Association of taken from different Internet sources as of February 16, 2001. College Reference Librarians: Chicago, 1956. Table 2 gives the top five hits of each source. The three lists, in- (5) Earle, P.; Vickery, B. C. Aslib Proc. 1969, 31, 237. D E C E M B E R 1 , 2 0 0 1 / A N A LY T I C A L C H E M I S T R Y
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