Fifty years of inorganic biochemistry: Developments, trends, highlights, impact and citations

A brief historic overview and analysis is presented of the almost 9000 scientific articles that have appeared in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry (JIB) and its predecessor (Bioinorganic Chemistry), since 1973. This overview has a focus on the different topics, in particular on the different elements of the Periodic Table and on papers that have received very large numbers of citations. Over the whole period, copper has been the element occurring in most publications (almost 1800, which is 20%), followed by iron which occurs in some 12% of all papers. Other favorite elements are zinc, platinum and ruthenium. The worldwide origin of papers published in JIB has been analyzed as well, showing a quite evenly worldwide distribution, with just a few exceptions. Trends in selected scientific topics over time (first 10 years; last 25 years, last 10 years) are also discussed. Also authors and institutes with the largest number of papers published in JIB have been detected. The numerical information is based on an analysis of the Web of Science with a cutoff date around July 1, 2020.