Looking for some good chemistry? According to a recent survey, papers by members of Harvard's chemistry faculty rank first in the world by frequency of citations per article, considered a valuable measure of the importance of the research.

"Harvard tops the table among U.S. institutions, having placed second in the last survey," according to the study. Harvard boasted 9.03 citations per paper for the 937 chemistry papers it produced from 1988 to 1992.

Harvard's "citation impact" rate compares with an international average of just more than two-and-a-half citations per paper. Second in the survey was the National Institute of Standards and Technology (8.94 citations per paper), followed by Caltech (8.30 citations per paper) in third place.

Chemistry Department Chair Roy G. Gordon, while clearly pleased with the results of the study, played down its significance, saying that the survey is just "one measure of the importance of the work that is being done here."

"The statistics speak for themselves, in that people are reading our articles and are citing them," said Gordon, who is also Cabot professor of chemistry.

The study was performed by the Institute for Scientific Information, the publishers of Science Watch. The Institute surveyed nearly 400,000 articles published in all types of journals from 1988 to 1992.