The Most Cited Reference?
Dr. C. Lee Giles, professor at the School of Information Sciences and Technology at Pennsylvania State University, stops by in the comments to declare that the most cited reference on Google Scholar is:

[BOOK] Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual - Library Search - Web Search
J Sambrooke, EF Fritsch, T Maniatis - Cited by 46350
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY, 1989

I'm inclined to agree. Including the 46,250 citations noted in the number one result, I found a total of 56,934 citations, just in the first 100 results. I challenge anyone to find a more cited book or paper. As Dr. Giles said, "Nothing else we could find even comes close". Dr. Giles made this finding with the aid of two graduate students, Isaac Councill and Eren Manavoglu.

What is so special about Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual? Well, according to Amazon, it is a three volume set which provides details on 250 laboratory protocols in DNA science. The books have been a mainstay of molecular biology for nearly twenty years. Don't think you'll find it cheap; the thousand pages of "unrivaled" DNA research cost $249.00. More info on the books can be found at its website, Molecular Cloning.com.
- posted by Nathan Weinberg @ 12/08/2004 08:47:00 PM