The years 1999 and 2000 were banner years for JCMT publications, in particular for SCUBA. The number of refereed, JCMT-related publications in 2000 reached 100 for the first time in our history. Furthermore in a 2001 paper by Benn and Sanchez (2001, PASP, 113, 385) on the scientific impact of large telescopes, citations from JCMT data during the 1995-1998 period accounted for 1.3% of all astronomy citations (c.f. IRAM 0.8%) (the total for all of submm and radio astronomy was 4%).

As further evidence of the profound impact that SCUBA and the JCMT are having on the field of astronomy, at the STIC meeting on 15 June 2001, George Meylan (STScI) presented a compilation of the number of citations to high impact papers published in 1999, based on instrument/facility. Citations to papers are only counted if the paper has received at least 50 citations, ensuring that only high-impact papers are counted.

As can be seen below, SCUBA came second only to the HST (by a significan margin) in terms of impact - clearly the most important ground-based instrument in recent memory. Furthermore, two of the top-ten cited papers in 1999 were SCUBA papers.