Top 10 countries in Environment/Ecology research based on total citations

	Country	Papers	Citations	Impact
1	Switzerland	4,376	57,750	13.20
2	Scotland	4,021	51,651	12.85
3	Sweden	7,035	88,057	12.52
4	England	16,6	207,729	12.49
5	Denmark	3,903	48,753	12.49
6	Netherlands	6,756	82,938	12.28
7	United States	80,018	916,623	11.46
8	Wales	1,0	14,0	11.04
9	Norway	3,396	37,246	10.97
10	Finland	4,134	45,015	10.89

The data above were extracted from Thomson Scientific’s Essential Science Indicators database. This database, currently covering the period January 1997 to October 2007, surveys only journal articles (original research reports and review articles) indexed by Thomson Scientific. Articles are assigned to a category based on the journals in which they were published and Thomson Scientific’s journal-to-category field-definition scheme. Both articles tabulated and citation counts to those articles are for the period indicated. Here our ranking is by citations per paper to reveal weighted impact. For articles with multiple authors from different nations, each nation receives full, not fractional, citation credit. Essential Science Indicators lists nations ranked in the top 50 per cent for a field over a given period, based on total citations. What seems interesting in this summary is the prominent performance of Scotland, England, and Wales, as well as Switzerland, the Netherlands and several Nordic nations despite producing far fewer articles than the US. Clearly, this area is a strong suit for these European nations. For more information on Thomson Scientific’s Essential Science Indicators, see http://scientific.thomson.com/products/esi.

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