Check out our note in Nature on how Small collections make a big impact and the UAM Birds Google Scholar profile upon which it is based.

The origin of the idea was a mental crossing of two wires: Mitt Romney’s oft-played comment “Corporations are people, my friend,” and our annual update of publications supported by the collection.

We created a Google Scholar publication profile for the University of Alaska Museum bird collection (UAM Birds). The publications that it has supported are diverse and well cited, with an h-index equivalent to an average Nobel laureate in physics (following Hirsch’s analysis in creating this index; PNAS 102:16569-16572). This level of impact should encourage more institutions to rediscover and reinvest in collections as important scientific infrastructure and societal resources.

The methods we used to create this profile for the collection are posted here.

Update: Alex Bond has a blog entry on this article, as does Roderick Page, here. Thanks to these bloggers and to those on Twitter who have commented positively on our note!