VCU psychiatric research papers are most cited

By Lorraine Cichowski, Joel Silverman and Gregory Donovan

RICHMOND, Va. - Virginia Commonwealth University has been ranked the top federally funded U.S. university based on the average number of citations per research paper published by VCU scientists in psychiatric journals between 1998 and 2002.

The prestigious ranking by Thomson ISI's Essential Science Indicators recognizes the quality of VCU's psychiatric-related research and the high respect granted VCU�s scientists by their colleagues across the world, said Joel J. Silverman, M.D., professor and chair of VCU's Department of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine.

The 171 psychiatry-related papers published by VCU during the period reviewed by Thomson ISI received an average of 11.15 citations each. 

The No. 2 university, with 9.72 citations per psychiatric paper, was Washington University, followed by Columbia University and Duke University (shared No. 3 spot), the University of California at San Diego and the University of Pennsylvania.

A major contributor to the success is the VCU's Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, a joint initiative of VCU�s Departments of Psychiatry and Human Genetics, which is focused on identifying genes and environmental factors that cause psychiatric diseases and behavioral differences.

"It has been a deep pleasure to watch our research program develop over the last decade to reach national and international prominence," said psychiatric geneticist Kenneth S. Kendler, M.D., professor of psychiatry and one of the institute�s two directors. "Its success is due to the effort of many, as research in this area - psychiatric genetics - is multidisciplinary by its nature."

Kendler, VCU's Rachel Brown Banks Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and professor of human genetics, is ranked by Thomson ISI as the second most-cited scientist in the area of psychiatry and psychology. In the almost 11-year period ended Oct. 31, 2003, Thomson ISI said Kendler was cited 9,107 times, an average of 46.94 times for each of his published papers. Kendler, a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, currently is on sabbatical at the elite Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, CA. He is writing a book summarizing the extensive studies on psychiatric and drug abuse disorders that he and his colleagues at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics have conducted over the last 15 years in collaboration with VCU's Mid-Atlantic Twin Registry (MATR). 

Thomson ISI, a unit of The Thomson Corp., provides information for researchers and scholars. Its Essential Science Indicators is an in-depth analytical database that indexes 8,500 journals from around the world on various topics and ranks authors, institutions, nations and journals.