Following hot on the heels of the h-index, we now have ‘m’, (I would have called it the ‘m-factor’), a measure of just how ‘hot’ a given research topic is. In this week’s issue of Nature, Jim Giles reports on how this analysis has been applied to selected scientific topics and compounds in order to determine what’s hot and what’s not. (The blog entry at Nature News can be found here)

Burning brightly at the top spot are carbon nanotubes, closely followed by nanowires, quantum dots, fullerenes and giant magnetoresistance. So, it’s official, nanotechnology is hot – perhaps Nature should launch a journal devoted to this exciting and vibrant topic..!

The h-index has received a lot of attention and there is no reason why ‘m’ won’t follow suit. If someone has a week or so to spare and applies this kind of analysis to get the top five in chemistry, let me know…

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Associate Editor, Nature Nanotechnology)