ScienceDirect is a service that allows people to search for and read full journal articles for many medical and social sciences journals online (which sure beats having to go to the local university library to make copies of them!). Combined with the use of other database services, it allows health journalists like us to read the scientific literature directly — and also put it into some useful context.
Every quarter, SciVerse ScienceDirect’s releases their Top 25 Hottest Articles list for a variety of scientific topics. These are the most read articles, as counted by article downloads on SciVerse ScienceDirect. In other words, these are the most popular articles read through the service.
We’ve excerpted the top 10 from the list, along with our brief comments about the list.