Plant Science Research Weekly – Top 20 hits of 2020
More then four years ago, we started a weekly column to highlight a few plant science articles each week. The series lauched with the name What We’re Reading, but at some point was rebranded to Plant Science Research Weekly.
From early on, we’ve drawn on the interests and talents of the Plantae Fellows to fuel this project. Their summaries are lightly edited by me, Mary Williams, and published on Friday mornings. (Subscribe to this series).
What caught your eye this year? Well, in spite of the fact that only 10% of the posts highlight review articles, more than 11 of the top 20 most-viewed posts are featuring review articles. This is perhaps not surprising, as it is well-known that review articles are more highly cited than primary reearch articles – we clearly like to read reviews!
We also seem to particularly like to read about new tools for breeding and research; about half of the top 20 focus on applications and methods.
Another five focus on some aspect of the plant microbiome – clearly this is a fast-moving, exciting research area.
I’d particularly like to thank the many Plantae Fellows and friends who contributed to this series. As you can see from the list below, there are 12 different contributors to the top-20 list; this project is truly a communal effort, which distributes the workload and also ensures a nice breadth of topic areas.
If you’re interested in contributing, we’ll open the application portal for Plantae Fellows applications later in 2021. If you can’t wait, feel free to send me a CV and a sample post in the PSRW style.
Without further ado, here are the most-read Plant Science Research Weekly summaries of 2020. Enjoy!
No-Genome-Required-GWAS (Nature Genetics)
Unlocking interspecies grafting (bioRxiv)
