Soil Biology & Biochemistry 36 (2004) 3 www.elsevier.

com/locate/soilbio

Soil Biology & Biochemistry Citation Classicsq

Richard G. Burns*
University of Kent at Canterbury, Department of Biosciences, CT2 7NJ, Canterbury, Kent, UK Accepted 3 November 2003

The number of times a paper is cited is generally regarded as an important measure of its inuence in the research community. Apparently many published papers are completely ignored and most are cited less than a dozen times over a 20-yr period. Of course, it helps if the paper is published in a respected journal with a high impact factor and Soil Biology & Biochemistry consistently tops the Institute of Scientic Information list as the most cited primary research journal in Agriculture and Soil Science. SBB was rst published in April 1969 and, no doubt, there are some of the very early papers that have been referred to many hundreds of time. However, we have restricted ourselves to the period covered by Web of Knowledge, which reports citations of papers published since 1980. These league tables are subject to all sorts of criticisms, yet many inuential research assessment groups regard them as a reliable guide to scientic quality. In recent years, the current impact of a publication can be measured by counting downloaded articles. Whether a prolonged period of citation is a better measure of research status (golden oldies) compared with an Internet searchers more immediate interest is debatable. We do not make any judgement about this here but, nonetheless, thought it would be interesting for our readers to learn about the ideas and the people behind these landmark older papers. The rst three of these papers (ranked 1, 2 and 9 in our hit parade) have in common the name David Jenkinson. Professor Jenkinson is a Lawes Trust Senior Fellow at what is nowadays called Rothamsted Research and it is here that he made his name and helped cement this institutes

reputation as a world centre for soil biology. For many years David was a member of the Editorial Committee of Soil Biology & Biochemistry. His highly signicant and prolonged contribution to our understanding of microbial processes in soil was widely recognised and resulted in him being elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1991, an accolade reserved for the UKs greatest scientists. David Jenkinsons distinguished colleagues at Rothamsted, Professors Phil Brookes and David Powlson, were major players in these papers and, three decades later, are amongst the worlds most inuential soil microbiologists. A later article in this series will deal with their contributions to other much-cited papers. The three papers that are the subject of the rst article are listed below: Vance, E.D., Brookes, P.C., Jenkinson, D.S., 1987. An extraction method for measuring soil microbial biomassC. Soil Biology & Biochemistry 19, 703 707. [Ranked number 1 and cited 990 times]. Brookes, P.C., Landman, A., Pruden, G., Jenkinson, D.S., 1985. Chloroform fumigation and the release of soil nitrogen-a rapid direct extraction method to measure microbial biomass nitrogen in soil. Soil Biology & Biochemistry 17, 837 842. [Ranked number 2 and cited 577 times] Brookes, P.C., Powlson, D.S., Jenkinson, D.S., 1982. Measurement of microbial biomass phosphorus in soil. Soil Biology & Biochemistry 14, 319 329. [Ranked number 9 and cited 218 times].

doi of original article 10.1016/S0038-0717(03)00325-0 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: r.g.burns@kent.ac.uk (R.G. Burns).

0038-0717/$ - see front matter q 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.soilbio.2003.10.001