Part 1 on iPS cell 2012 publication trends: an unusual year

iPS cell papersI regularly do an update on the publication trends in the iPS cell field and these have been posts that readers have found especially useful. Here was a popular update from 2010 and another one from 2011 that included a who’s who of the iPS cell field more broadly as well beyond just publishing. Then I had a second one later in 2011 that look in more depth specifically at iPS cell publishing.

2012 seems different so far.

So what’s up with the iPS cell field from a publication standpoint deep into the year of 2012?

Today we have part I of this look at iPS cell publications in 2012 and trends. Stayed tuned for part 2 of this look at iPS cell publishing trends later this week where amongst other things we’ll look at journal, author, and country trends in iPS cell publishing for 2012. Some interesting things are going on.

On to part 1…

I did my usual Web of Knowledge search using the title search term:

Title=(iPS cell OR iPS cells OR induced pluripotent stem cell OR induced pluripotent stem cells OR induced pluripotency OR induction pluripotent)

This search tells us (see results above) that, so far at least, 2012 has been a relatively quiet year for iPS cell papers in terms of # of pubs and their impact.

Of course the # of pubs on iPS cells may “catch up” as it did last year in the last few months and end up rising above the previous year, but still it is a bit behind the curve so far in 2012.

In theory 2012 could be the first year during the relatively short history of iPS cells that the # of pubs actually goes down from one year to the next, but I’ll only believe that when I see it after year’s end.

Still, one gets a sense even without number crunching that the year of 2012 so far has been a relatively uneventful one for the iPS cell field. There’s less buzz and fewer publications on iPS cells this year that have really had any “wow” factor.hot iPS cell papers

If we narrow our search to only this year so far for iPS pubs, not a lot of publications are getting intra-year citations (i.e. being cited in the same year published). This strongly suggests a relative lack of sexy iPS cell papers in 2012. Of course when papers were published within a given year will impact their intra-year citation #s as those published later in the year will have fewer citations.

Given the above caveat, what are the top iPS cells papers by intra-year citations in 2012?

  • The #1 paper is on Alzheimer’s disease modeling use iPS cells.
  • The #2 paper is a review.
  • The #3 paper is on the metabolome of iPS cells. Very cool.
  • #4 is a techie paper.
  • #5 is on Vitamin C.
  • #6 is on DNA sequence variation using non-integrating plasmids.
  • #7 is a Huntington Disease paper related to lysosomal activity. Interesting!
  • #8 is again a methods techie kind of paper.
  • #9 is on heart cell function of cells derived from iPS cells. I like that people are seeing whether iPS-derived differentiated cells are actually functional.
  • #10 is on developing an iPS cell bank.

Good stuff, but nothing mind-blowing, right?

Perhaps expectations are too high and, yeah, admittedly, 14 citations (as the #1 paper has) in the same year published is not exactly shabby.

My favorite so far in terms of potential real impact and novelty is #3.

What about you? 

Also am I missing any great iPS cell papers of 2012? If so please comment about it!