The coronaviruses are a family of
enveloped RNA pathogens characterized by a nonsegmented,
positive-stranded genome. Prior to the media attention about the
possible role of a coronavirus in the recent outbreaks of SARS, or
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, coronaviruses were not thought to
cause anything more severe than the common cold in humans, but have
been long known as a lethal pathogen in birds and mammals. Coronavirus
replication is considered to be rather unusual, and is the subject of
the majority of the papers in this Special Topics survey of the
literature on this topic over the past decade. These papers examine
different aspects of the minutiae of the replication process, such as
genome organization, different steps in the transport process, various
functional receptors, defining the replication signal, and modes of
viral assembly. One paper focuses on the possibility of a vaccine for
mouse hepatitis virus using cytotoxic T lymphocytes. Clinical aspects
of the coronavirus family in this survey discuss the cause-effect
relationship between respiratory viruses and the exacerbation of
asthma.
Methodology
To construct this database,
papers were extracted based on a topic (title, abstract, and
keyword) search. The keywords used were as follows:
The baseline time span for this
database is 1993 - 2003 (first bi-monthly). The
resulting database contained 1,674 papers; 3,198 authors; 60
countries; 274 journals; and 768 institutions.
Rankings
Once the database was in place,
it was used to generate the lists of top 20 papers, authors, journals,
institutions, and nations, covering a time span of 1993 - 2003 (first
bi-monthly).
The top 20 papers are ranked according to total cites. Rankings for author, journal, institution, and country are listed in three ways: according to total cites, total papers, and total cites/paper. The paper thresholds used to determine scientist, institution, country, and journal rankings according to total cites/paper were as follows:
20, 20, 10, and 15 respectively.
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