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What Are The Most Cited Research Papers Of All Time?

The writers at Nature News recently put together a list of the 100 most highly cited papers of all time. There are a few surprises in here, including the fact that it takes no fewer than 12,119 citations to rank in the top 100.

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The list, which was created by pulling data from the Science Citation Index (SCI), spans the last 100 years of scholarly publications. The sheer size of the literature — 58 million items — shows that the top 100 papers are true outliers; just three publications have more than 100,000 citations. Many of the world's most famous and influential papers didn't even make the cut.

To help put it all into perspective, Nature News put together a video (above) and this infographic (click to embiggen).

If the cumulative stack of all these papers were scaled to the size of Mount Kilimanjaro, then the 100 most-cited papers would represent just one centimeter at the peak. Only 14,499 papers — about a meter and a half's worth — have more than 1,000 citations. Roughly half of the items have only one citation.

So what's the most cited paper of all time? That distinction goes to a 1951 paper by U.S. biochemist Oliver Lowry and colleagues describing an assay to determine the amount of protein in a solution. To date, it has collect more than 305,000 citations. And no one's entirely sure why...

Here are the top five:

Sexy, right?

Shockingly, Watson and Crick's paper on the structure of DNA missed out (just 5,207 citations... what!? ), along with many other historic breakthroughs (like the 1985 discovery of the ozone hole — just 1,871 citations). Instead, papers on methods and software dominate the list.

Here's a breakdown of the citations by category:

You can browse through the entire list here (.xls spreadsheet) or via Nature News 's interactive graphic . And there's much more at the Nature News article .

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Celebrating the most cited papers from 2021

Recognising, publishing, and promoting excellence in science are part of our core values as a not-for-profit society publisher. to celebrate brilliant science and the researchers behind it, we're sharing the top-cited article from each of our journals in 2021..

Philosophical Transactions B 

Continuing its long history of influential scientific publishing, Philosophical Transactions B publishes high quality theme issues on topics of current importance and general interest within the life sciences, guest-edited by leading authorities and comprising new research, reviews and opinions from prominent researchers.

Its top-cited paper from 2021, Novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV (COVID-19): early estimation of epidemiological parameters and epidemic size estimates by Jonathan M. Read, Jessica R. E. Bridgen, Derek A. T. Cummings, Antonia Ho and Chris P. Jewell, shows early modelling of epidemiological parameters and epidemic predictions of the COVID-19 pandemic which helped shape early responses. 

Philosophical Transactions A

Philosophical Transactions A also publishes high quality theme issues on topics of current importance and general interest guest-edited by leading authorities, but within the physical, mathematical and engineering sciences.

The top-cited article from this journal, Time-series forecasting with deep learning: a survey by Bryan Lim and Stefan Zohren, explores how deep learning can facilitate decision support with time-series data. 

Open Biology  

Open Biology is a fully open access journal that welcomes original, high impact research in cell and developmental biology, molecular and structural biology, biochemistry, neuroscience, immunology, microbiology and genetics.

Its top-cited paper from 2021 entitled, Hallmarks of cancer—the new testament  by Sasi S. Senga and Richard P. Grose, provides a deep insight into targeting cancers via innovative ways.

Proceedings B

Proceedings B is the Royal Society’s flagship biological research journal, accepting original articles and reviews of outstanding scientific importance and broad general interest. 

Its top-cited paper, Native biodiversity collapse in the eastern Mediterranean by Paolo G. Albano, Jan Steger, Marija Bošnjak, Beata Dunne, Zara Guifarro, Elina Turapova, Quan Hua, Darrell S. Kaufman, Gil Rilov and Martin Zuschin, demonstrates that populations of marine molluscs have collapsed in recent decades in parts of the eastern Mediterranean as warming waters have made conditions unsuitable for native species.

Proceedings A

Proceedings A publishes articles across the chemical, computational, Earth, engineering, mathematical, and physical sciences. The articles published are high-quality, original, fundamental articles of interest to a wide range of scientists, and often have long citation half-lives. 

The top-cited paper, Evolution of spray and aerosol from respiratory releases: theoretical estimates for insight on viral transmission by P. M. de Oliveira, L. C. C. Mesquita, S. Gkantonas, A. Giusti and E. Mastorakos, demonstrates that social distancing measures alone do not provide adequate protection from COVID-19, and emphasises the importance of ventilation and face masks in order to control the spread of the virus.

Interface Focus

Each Interface Focus themed issue is devoted to a particular subject at the interface of the physical and life sciences. Formed of high-quality articles, they aim to facilitate cross-disciplinary research across this traditional divide by acting as a forum accessible to all. 

Its top-cited article, How did we get here: what are droplets and aerosols and how far do they go? A historical perspective on the transmission of respiratory infectious diseases by K. Randall, E. T. Ewing, L. C. Marr, J. L. Jimenez and L. Bourouiba, explains that respiratory disease transmission can be spread by droplets and aerosols, and suggests that all viruses and bacteria that travel by these routes can be stopped by mitigation measures like high quality masks that are able to block both droplets and aerosols.

The top-cited paper from this journal, Mathematical foundations of moral preferences by Valerio Capraro and Matjaž Perc, looks at the reasoning behind why people act unselfishly, and explores the mathematical foundations of moral preferences.

The top-cited paper from this journal, A marine zooplankton community vertically structured by light across diel to interannual timescales by Laura Hobbs, Neil S. Banas, Jonathan H. Cohen, Finlo R. Cottier, Jørgen Berge and Øystein Varpe, investigates how aversion to light has been used as a survival tactic used by small creatures in the ocean, and discovers that this photophobia may be protecting them against impacts of environmental changes in the Arctic.

Royal Society Open Science is an open journal publishing high-quality original research across the entire range of science on the basis of objective peer-review, welcoming the submission of all high-quality science including articles which may usually be difficult to publish elsewhere, such as replications or those that include negative findings. 

Its top-cited paper from 2021, The effect of face masks and sunglasses on identity and expression recognition with super-recognizers and typical observers by Eilidh Noyes, Josh P. Davis, Nikolay Petrov, Katie L. H. Gray and Kay L. Ritchie, investigated the affect of face masks on facial recognition skills and found that, despite face masks covering a large proportion of the face, people still found it surprisingly easy to recognise familiar faces behind masks – speaking to the remarkable versatility of this human skill.

Emphasis is placed on impact factor in measuring the success of journals and articles, however by signing up to DORA we’re working to improve the ways in which the research we publish is evaluated by offering a variety of metrics, including citation data. Visit this blog post to find out more about our evolving publishing metrics. 

If you'd like to receive more citations, think about publishing open access. Authors who choose open access publication are likely to benefit from increased dissemination and citation. Data from our Transformative Journal articles published in 2021 shows that open access papers received on average 29% more citations, 60% more downloads, and 34% higher Altmetric scores than subscription articles. Find out more on the benefits of open access .

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Highly Cited Researchers 2023

Highly cited researchers have demonstrated significant and broad influence in their field(s) of research..

Each researcher selected has authored multiple Highly Cited Papers™ which rank in the top 1% by citations for their field(s) and publication year in the Web of Science™ over the past decade. However, citation activity is not the sole selection indicator. A preliminary list based on citation activity is then refined using qualitative analysis and expert judgement.

Of the world’s population of scientists and social scientists, Highly Cited Researchers™ are 1 in 1,000.

2023 Analysis

Experts from the Institute for Scientific Information™ provide their detailed insight into the list of Highly Cited Researchers 2023, including their geographical locations, primary tenured research institutes and a breakdown of their fields of research.

Read our analysis of the 2023 list.

Five Hundred Most-Cited Papers in the Computer Sciences: Trends, Relationships and Common Factors

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• Phoey Lee Teh   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7787-1299 19 &
• Peter Heard   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5135-7822 20  

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 1366))

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This study reveals common factors among highly cited papers in the computer sciences. The 500 most cited papers in the computer sciences published between January 2013 and December 2017 were downloaded from the Web of Science (WoS). Data on the number of citations, number of authors, article length and subject sub-discipline were extracted and analyzed in order to identify trends, relationships and common features. Correlations between common factors were analyzed. The 500 papers were cited a total of 10,926 times: the average number of citations per paper was 21.82 citations. A correlation was found between author credibility (defined in terms of the QS University Ranking of the first named author’s affiliation) and the number of citations. Authors from universities ranked 350 or higher were more cited than those from lower ranked universities. Relationships were also found between journal ranking and both the number of authors and the article length. Higher ranked journals tend to have a greater number of authors, but were of shorter length. The article length was also found to be correlated with the number of authors and the QS Subject Ranking of the first author’s affiliation. The proportion of articles in higher ranked journals (journal quartile), the length of articles and the number of citations per page were all found to correlate to the sub-discipline area (Information Systems; Software Engineering; Artificial Intelligence; Interdisciplinary Applications; and Theory and Methods).

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Álvaro Rocha

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Institute of Data Science and Digital Technologies, Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania

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DCT, Universidade Portucalense, Porto, Portugal

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Department of Information Sciences, University of Sheffield, Lisbon, Portugal

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Teh, P.L., Heard, P. (2021). Five Hundred Most-Cited Papers in the Computer Sciences: Trends, Relationships and Common Factors. In: Rocha, Á., Adeli, H., Dzemyda, G., Moreira, F., Ramalho Correia, A.M. (eds) Trends and Applications in Information Systems and Technologies . WorldCIST 2021. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1366. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72651-5_2

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These 10 institutions published the most papers in Nature and Science in 2018

From CRISPR to CLARITY, here are some of the most high-profile studies.

Gemma Conroy, Bec Crew

Gene-editing tech, CRISPR-Cas9, featured in one of Harvard's most widely discussed Nature papers in 2017. Credit: Meletios Verras/Getty Images

3 September 2019

Meletios Verras/Getty Images

Gene-editing tech, CRISPR-Cas9, featured in one of Harvard's most widely discussed Nature papers in 2017.

The journals Nature and Science are where some of the highest quality research is showcased to the world.

The institutions listed below were the largest contributors to papers published in Nature and Science in 2018, as tracked by the Nature Index.

View the Nature Index 2019 Annual Tables for Nature and Science .

1. Harvard University

Fractional count: 70.67 (-15.3%), Article count: 210

No research institute beats Harvard University for papers published in Nature and Science .

As one of the oldest universities in the United States , and one of the world’s leading higher education institutions, Harvard has a storied history of revolutionary discoveries, including the smallpox vaccine, anaesthesia, and oral contraception.

More recently, widely discussed studies by Harvard scientists include a 2017 Nature paper that described a method for storing digital data in bacterial genomes using CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology, and a Science paper this year , in which researchers from Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science analyzed the effect of fake news on Twitter during the 2016 US presidential election.

2. Stanford University

Fractional Count: 39.85 (-24.3%); Article Count: 100

Stanford University appears in the upper echelons of many of the Nature Index Annual Tables rankings, including chemistry, life sciences, the physical sciences, and academic institutions. It’s also the second most prolific publisher in Nature and Science .

Top authors at Stanford include bioengineer and neuroscientist, Karl Deisseroth , whose 2013 Nature paper on a new technology named CLARITY describes how mammalian brains can be rendered “clear as Jell-O” for access by molecular probes, as The New York Times put it .

Computer scientist, Fei-Fei Li, co-director of Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute and Vision and Learning Lab, is one of the most prolific researchers in the field of AI, and has published on machine learning, deep learning, computer vision and cognitive neuroscience.

3. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Fractional count: 37.69 (13.3%), Article count: 130

As one of the world’s most prestigious higher education institutions, MIT has been at the frontier of research for more than 150 years, its close ties with industry fostering an emphasis on entrepreneurship and applied science.

With 12,707 faculty and staff on campus and an annual budget of more than US$3.5 billion (2018), almost 85% of MIT’s undergraduates engage in frontline, faculty-led research.

One of MIT’s most talked-about studies in 2018 was a Science paper that analysed the spread of true and false news. Garnering an Altmetrics score of more than 9,600, which includes more than 8,000 tweets and 360 news stories, it lent support to the adage: lies spread faster than the truth.

A 2018 Nature paper by MIT researchers on the ‘Moral Machine experiment’ also drew significant attention from the wider public, posing complex questions about how AI in future will make moral decisions.

4. Max Planck Society

Fractional Count: 32.35 (-15%) Article count: 139

From nuclear fission to the theory of relativity, Germany's Max Planck Society has been the birthplace of some of the most important discoveries in science.

Among Max Planck’s Nature and Science findings published last year were a new antiretroviral treatment for HIV , graphene nanoribbons , and a new method for capturing changes in RNA .

One of Max Planck’s most highly cited Nature papers of 2018 presented the most precise measurements of the electron ever made. The findings support the standard model of particle physics, which proposes that electrons maintain a near perfect spherical shape.

Along with an international team, Max Planck researchers published a paper in Science last year that revealed the source of cosmic neutrinos, a type of high-energy particle that travels over vast distances. The study found that neutrinos originate from blazars, a type of galaxy powered by supermassive black holes.

5. University of California, Berkeley

Fractional count: 24.30 (39.4%), Article count: 78

Credited for the discovery or co-discovery of 16 elements — more than any other university — the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) has a well-established history of scientific advances. You can see its fingerprints on 97 berkelium (Bk), 98 californium (Cf) and 95 americium (Am).

Among its most highly-cited Nature and Science papers of last year were reports on the genetic basis of psychiatric disorders ; a possible cause of fast radio bursts ; and cobalt-free batteries .

In February 2018 , UC Berkeley researchers were involved in the development of genome-editing tool that can detect human papillomavirus with great sensitivity. The study was the institution’s most highly-cited Science paper of that year.

A paper published in Nature also attracted a lot of attention in 2018, when UC Berkeley researchers, along with an international team, described a microchip that uses light to transmit data. The new device is faster and more efficient than conventional silicon chip technologies.

6. University of California, Los Angeles

Fractional Count: 21.11 (82.1%), Article count: 67

Having just celebrated its 100th birthday, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is one of the youngest universities in Nature Index’s top 10 tables, and yet it receives the most student applications of any university in the US.

Key papers published in Science last year include a study that revealed how certain psychiatric disorders share global gene expression patterns, and one describing how UCLA engineers 3D-printed an AI device that identifies objects at the speed of light, a promising development for medicine, robotics and security .

As vice-chancellor for research, Roger Wakimoto, says, UCLA’s growth and achievements mirror the trajectory of the city it calls home.

“I believe the institution’s success is based on its strong commitment to teaching, recruiting and retaining some of the most talented researchers in the world, and having a close and synergistic relationship with the city of Los Angeles.”

7. Yale University

Fractional count: 19.75 (36.8%), Article count: 57

From finding evidence of time crystals to discovering how gut bacteria cause autoimmune disease, Yale University’s research consistently breaks ground. As one of the oldest universities in the US, it’s also built a strong record of highly-cited papers published in the world’s leading scientific journals.

Last year, Yale astronomers made headlines when they discovered that the galaxy NGC 1052-DF2 contained almost no dark matter, challenging the assumption that it’s essential for the formation of galaxies. The study was one of Yale’s most talked-about Nature papers of 2018.

A Science study involving Yale researchers on how household products contribute to air pollution also sparked conversation last year. The team found that cleaning products, perfumes and shampoos rival transport as major emissions sources.

8. Columbia University in the City of New York

Fractional count: 19.67 (-4.3%), Article count: 65

Established 265 years ago by royal charter of King George II of England, Columbia University is the oldest institution of higher learning in New York City and the fifth oldest in the US.

With more than 200 research centres and institutes, 350 new inventions each year and 84 Nobel laureates, Columbia is at the forefront of scientific discovery.

In 2018, Columbia University produced 65 papers in Nature and Science , placing it in eighth place in this ranking. The institution’s research performance is particularly strong in the life sciences, which accounts for around half of its overall output.

Last year, researchers from Columbia co-authored a study suggesting that 60% of people with European descent living in the US can be genetically identified using available genetic information, even if they have not undergone genetic testing.

Published in Science , the findings highlight the need for strategies that safeguard genetic privacy.

9. University of Oxford

Fractional count: 19.56 (73.6%), Article count: 73

The University of Oxford is the oldest in the English-speaking world, with teaching dating back as far as 1096. Today, it maintains its prestigious reputation with eighth place among the leading academic institutions in the Nature Index.

The largest share of Oxford’s scientific output is in the life sciences, with papers in the discipline contributing around one-third of its output.

Research funding provided by councils, trusts and industry is Oxford’s largest source of income, accounting for 26% of its funds — the highest research income of all the United Kingdom's universities.

Oxford is also home to the Beecroft Building, a new US$64-million facility dedicated to experimental and theoretical physics with laboratories designed for making precise measurements at the atomic level.

In 2018, Oxford researchers co-authored an influential analysis of how to reduce the environmental impacts of food. The paper, published in Science , triggered widespread debate about food choices, such as avoiding dairy and meat.

10. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich

Fractional count: 19.23 (29.1%), Article count: 55

Boasting 21 Nobel Prize winners, two Fields medallists and a Turing Award recipient, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) has built a reputation for trailblazing research over the past 160 years.

The technical and scientific university is also renowned for its ability to produce highly-cited research, taking tenth place among the top institutions in Nature and Science papers.

Among the most talked-about papers from the university are predictions of increased marine heatwaves under climate change; a technique for transmitting quantum information ; and detailed images of proteins involved in opioid signalling.

In January 2018 , researchers at ETH Zurich discovered how a particular group of nanocrystals are able to emit a bright light. The study, which was the most highly-cited Nature article from the institution that year, could have a range of applications in materials science, from data transmission to supercomputers.

The top 10 academic institutions in 2018: normalized

The top 10 academic institutions in 2018

The top 10 countries for scientific research in 2018

Correction: Text amended to remove "in the 21 century" from the opening sentence of the Max Planck Society's profile.

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Top 10: The Most Cited Scientific Sources in 2023

Create a spot-on reference in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and other styles

2023 was a fruitful year for our users, who used our automatic citation service to cite a variety of sources on a daily basis. We analyzed which works were added to bibliographies most often, and compiled a rating of the top 10 most popular scientific articles and other sources for 2023 on Grafiati.

Top 10 Most Cited Scientific Journals of 2023

This year continues the trend of last year , where the most cited scientific journals mostly had a medical focus. 5 of the 10 most cited journals this year are devoted to the topic of medicine and health.

Many magazine titles entered the list for the second time, but some  –  SSRN Electronic Journal ,  Sustainability  and The New England Journal of Medicine  – became more popular with our users compared to the previous year.

Top 10 Most Cited Scientific Articles of 2023

After reviewing the journals, let's move on to the specific articles that received the most citations this year.

1. Thévenaz, Pierre. "O que é a fenomenologia? A fenomenologia de Merleau-Ponty (1952)." Revista do NUFEN 9, no. 2 (2017): 169–76. https://doi.org/10.26823/revistadonufen.vol9.n02translation12 .

2. Schulz, Pierre. "Biological Clocks and the Practice of Psychiatry." Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 9, no. 3 (2007): 237–55. https://doi.org/10.31887/dcns.2007.9.3/pschulz .

3. Hytowitz, Allan N. "Review of Using the Dyop Optotype for Acuity and Refractions." Journal of Optometry 16, no. 4 (2023): 317–18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optom.2022.12.002 .

4. Sanz Espinar, Gemma. "Hacia un nuevo MCER. Objetivo: mediación." Çédille , no. 22 (2022): 513–19. https://doi.org/10.25145/j.cedille.2022.22.29 .

5. Simões, Greice Dotto, Cainá Corrêa do Amaral, Camila Perelló Ferrúa, Amanda de Lima Aldrighi, Karoline Brizola de Souza, Geovanna Peter Corrêa, Roberta Giorgi, and Fernanda Nedel. "Kombucha Application in Health: Systematic Review." Acta Scientifci Nutritional Health 6, no. 8 (August 2022): 31–41. https://doi.org/10.31080/asnh.2022.06.1093 .

6. Rochman, Fathur, Ririk Kartika Sulistyaningsih, and Gussasta Levi Arnenda. "CPUE Standardization of Catch Per Unit of Effort (CPUE) of Albacore (Thunnus Alalunga) Caught From Longline Fishery in the Eastern Indian Ocean." Journal of Fisheries and Marine Research 5, no. 1 (2021): 125–37. https://doi.org/10.21776/ub.jfmr.2021.005.01.18 .

7. Oliveira Júnior, José Oswaldo de. "SBED and the 2022 Lima Declaration: Guarantee of Care for Children and Adolescents in Pain and Their Families." Brazilian Journal of Pain 5, no. 3 (2022): 193–94. https://doi.org/10.5935/2595-0118.20220050-pt .

8. Mehta, Anita, Isham Mittal, and Anushka Kakkar. "Artificial Intelligence in Dental Medicine." Acta Scientific Dental Scienecs 6, no. 2 (February 2022): 57–59. https://doi.org/10.31080/asds.2022.06.1298 .

9. Ejsmont, Wiktor. "Free Meixner Distributions." Didactics of Mathematics 13, no. 17 (2016): 13–16. https://doi.org/10.15611/dm.2016.13.02 .

10. Newton, John Z. "Musical Creativity and Mindfulness Meditation: Can the Practice of Mindfulness Meditation Enhance Perceived Musical Creativity?" International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 34, no. 1-2 (2015): 172–86. https://doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2015.34.1-2.172 .

The most cited article this year was  O que é a fenomenologia? A fenomenologia de Merleau-Ponty (1952) , which was the leader of the rating last year as well. Articles  Biological Clocks and the Practice of Psychiatry ,  Artificial Intelligence in Dental Medicine  and Free Meixner Distributions  also maintained their popularity among Grafiati users and were included in both this year's and last year's ranking of articles.

Among the ten articles, four specifically center around medical themes, reflecting a prevailing trend observed in journals. The remaining six articles exhibit a diverse range, delving into topics ranging from musical creativity to fishing efficiency. This diversity is particularly exciting for us, as it underscores our commitment to offering bibliography tools that cater to scholars from a broad spectrum of disciplines.

Top 10 Non-Article Sources

Although scientific journals and articles are the most popular type of source for Grafiati users (and perhaps for scientists in general), we would like to list separately the most cited publications of other types – books, dissertations, conference papers, etc.

1.  Pedersen, Torben. "HTTPS, Secure HTTPS." In Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security , edited by Henk C. A. van Tilborg, 268–69. New York, NY: Springer, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-23483-7_189 .

2.  American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-5 . 5th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 2013.

3.  Hernández Sampieri, Roberto, Carlos Fernández Collado, and Pilar Baptista Lucio. Metodología de la investigación . 3rd ed. México: McGraw Hill, 2004.

4. Alexander, Charles K., and Matthew N. O. Sadiku. Fundamentos de circuitos eléctricos . 5th ed. México: McGraw-Hill Interamericana, 2013.

5. Brown, Theodore L., H. Eugene LeMay Jr, Bruce E. Bursten, Catherine J. Murphy, and Patrick M. Woodward. Química: La ciencia central . Translated by Ana Elizabeth García Hernández. 12th ed. México: Pearson Educación, 2014.

6. Chang, Raymond. Química . Translated by María del Carmen Ramírez Medeles and Rosa Zugazagoltía Herranz. 7th ed. México: McGraw-Hill, 2005.

7. Tortora, Gerard J., and Bryan H. Derrickson. Principios de anatomia y fisiologia . 11th ed. México: Editorial Medica Panamericana, 2006.

8. Lattouf, Ziad. "La mise en oeuvre de l'accord d'association en Algérie - Union européenne dans les perspectives du respect des droits de l'homme." Thèse de doctorat, Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3, 2011. http://www.theses.fr/2011LYO30002 .

9.  Kasper, D. L., A. S. Fauci, S. L. Hauser, D. L. Longo, J. Jameson, and J. Loscalzo.  Harrison principios de medicina interna . 19th ed. Madrid: McGraw-Hill Interamericana de España, 2016.

10. Cengel, Yunus. Termodinamica . McGraw-Hill, 2005.

Here, too, there is some similarity with last year's results, but new sources are also emerging, such as Ziad Lattouf's dissertation and Yunus Cengel's book.

The most cited conference paper is:

Badriyah, Lailatul, Dewi Nawank Sary, Syauqy Thoriq Ahmad, Sihombing Ricoh Darisman, Mustikarini Eries Dyah, Prayoga Gigih Ibnu, Santi Ratna, and Waluyo Budi. "Phenological Characteristics, Distinctness, Uniformity, and Morphological Stability of Potential Genotypes of Upland Rice." In  1st International Conference of Biology for Student , 100–111. NST Proceedings, 2022. https://doi.org/10.11594/nstp.2022.2613 .

We congratulate the authors whose scientific works have proven their relevance this year, and wish them to be popular among our users in the future!

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• v.10(4); 2018 Apr

The top 2,000 cited articles in critical care medicine: a bibliometric analysis

Zhongheng zhang.

1 Department of Emergency Medicine, Sir Run-Run Shaw Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou 310016, China;

Sven Van Poucke

2 Department of Anesthesiology, Critical Care, Emergency Medicine and Pain Therapy, Genk, Belgium;

Hemant Goyal

3 Department of Internal Medicine, Mercer University School of Medicine, Macon, GA, USA;

Daniel D. Rowley

4 Pulmonary Diagnostics & Respiratory Therapy Services, University of Virginia Medical Center, Charlottesville, VA, USA;

5 Department of Critical Care Medicine, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai 200000, China;

6 Duke-NUS Medical School, National University of Singapore, Singapore 169857, Singapore;

7 Health Services Research Centre, Singapore Health Services, Singapore 169856, Singapore

The bibliometric analysis has been performed on several topics in critical care medicine (CCM) focusing on top 100 cited articles, but the analysis on CCM literature as a whole is missing. The present study aimed to perform a complete bibliometric analysis in the field of CCM.

An electronic search of the Scopus database was performed on Feb 13, 2018. The search strategy involved core terms related to CCM. The top 2,000 most cited articles in the field of CCM were included in the analysis. Descriptive statistics on these top-cited articles, country distributions, and journals are reported. Individual author’s productivity was assessed with the Lotka’s law. Co-occurrence of keywords was visualized with the Fruchterman-Reingold layout. The Walktrap algorithm was employed for clustering analysis.

A total of 2,000 documents were included in the analysis with median citations of 386 times [interquartile range (IQR): 308–562 times]. The most cited article was the original paper that described the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE) II score. The included articles were published in 411 journals. The median number of documents published in one journal was 1, and the mean number was 4.9, indicating a skewed distribution. The maximum number of publications was 217 in CCM. Author’s productivity profile was significantly different from the Lotka’s law (P=0.001), with n and C values of 2.8 and 0.52, respectively. Fruchterman-Reingold network plot showed that studies involving human subject were the most common literature type. Sepsis was a major research topic that co-occurred with keywords such as disease severity, nonhuman, risk assessment and practice guideline.

Conclusions

The study performed bibliometric analyses of 2,000 top-cited articles in CCM. The most cited article was the one which developed the APACHE II score. Author’s productivity was significantly different from the Lotka’s law.

Introduction

Critical care medicine (CCM) is becoming increasingly important in a society with aging population. Elderly patients typically have multiple comorbidities and an acute illness such as pneumonia, myocardial infarction, or sepsis that may cause acute decompensation or a new critical illness requiring intensive care unit (ICU) admission ( 1 , 2 ). For example, myocardial infarction could cause cardiogenic shock and acute hypoxic respiratory failure ( 3 ). These critically ill patients with multiple comorbidities are at increased risk of in-hospital morbidity and mortality. Furthermore, CCM plays an essential role in the management of bird flu influenza pandemics, injuries caused by motor vehicle collisions, septic shock and natural disasters ( 4 , 5 ). Therefore, CCM is receiving greater attentions from researchers and healthcare professionals. Increasing awareness of the importance of CCM is reflected by the expanding number of publications within this specialty, including pre-clinical and translational clinical practice research studies. The bibliometric studies can help to (I) identify hotspots in a certain area; (II) network connections between subspecialties; (III) the leading investigators; and (IV) author’s scientific output. Many bibliometric studies focused on a few vital issues in the field of CCM such as sepsis, severe brain injury and acute kidney injury ( 6 - 8 ). However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no bibliometric study that analyzes the entire CCM area. In this study, we performed a bibliometric analysis of the 2,000 most cited articles in the specialty of CCM, while aiming to provide an overview of CCM research and reveal connections among them.

Search strategy and study selection

An electronic search of the Scopus database was performed on Feb 13, 2018. The search strategy involved core terms related to CCM and the specific search strategy was as follows: (TITLE-ABS-KEY (critical AND care) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (intensive AND care) OR TITLE-ABS-KEY (critically AND ill) AND SRCTYPE (j). There was no language restriction.

The number of citations was used as one of the criteria for the selection of studies, to ensure that the included documents were representative of the most influential articles in the field of CCM. The top 2,000 most cited articles were included in the final analysis.

Epidemiological description of included documents

The top ten most cited articles were retrieved, along with their journals and the year of publication. The leading contributors in CCM was also reported. A histogram ranking of the contributors by the number of highly cited documents was depicted. A pie chart was used to examine the distribution of highly cited documents by countries.

Lotka’s law

The Lotka’s law was employed to explore the frequency of publication by authors in CCM ( 9 ). The number of authors making x contributions is a fraction of the number making a single contribution, following the formula 1 ⁄x n where n nearly always equals two, which is an approximation of the inverse-square law. The number of authors publishing a certain number of articles is a fixed ratio to the number of authors publishing a single article. As the number of published articles increases, authors producing that many publications become less frequent. The general form is described by the following equation:

where X is the number of publications, Y is the relative frequency of authors with X publications, and n and C are constants depending on the specific field. The aim of the analysis was to find the constants for n and C . The Pao’s table was employed to display descriptive statistics of publications and authors ( 10 ).

Co-occurrence network

A keywords co-occurrence network was generated with the Fruchterman-Reingold layout, which is a force-directed graph drawing algorithm to create a visual object ( 11 ). Keywords with the 30 highest frequencies were displayed in the network plot. Clustering analysis was conducted with the Walktrap algorithm, a method based on the idea that random walks throughout the graph tend to detect subgraphs (areas of the graph with high edge density) as there are only few links that lead outside a given community ( 12 ).

Clustering analysis for keywords

A heat map was drawn for the clustering analysis ( 13 ). As the keywords constitute a binary matrix, the vectors are regarded as binary bits, and non-zero elements were “on” and zero elements were “off”. The distance is defined as the proportion of bits in which only one is “on” amongst those with at least one is “on”. The Ward’s minimum variance method was employed for hierarchical clustering analysis, aiming at finding compact, spherical clusters ( 14 ).

The top ten most cited documents in the field of CCM

A total of 2,000 articles were included in the analysis. These articles were cited by a median of 386 times [interquartile range (IQR): 308–562 times]. The top ten most cited articles are shown in Table 1 . Four papers were published in Critical Care Medicine , two in the New England journal of medicine ( NEJM ), one each in the Journal of Medical Association of America ( JAMA ), Intensive Care Medicine, Critical Care and Chest . The most cited article was published in 1985 in Critical Care Medicine by Knaus et al. that described the APACHE II score ( 15 , 16 ). The score is widely used in clinical practice, as well as in clinical research as a benchmark index of illness severity. The second and third most cited articles were original articles focused on the management of hyperglycemia and early goal directed therapy (EGDT), in the critically ill patients, respectively ( 16 , 17 ). While the former topic is a commonly encountered condition in the ICU, the latter is one of the hottest topics of research in critical care in recent years. Four of the ten documents focused on sepsis ( 16 , 18 - 20 ), three described scoring systems for risk stratification of critically ill patients ( 15 , 21 , 22 ), and four were clinical practice guidelines or consensus ( 18 - 20 , 23 ).

Source journals

The included 2,000 articles were published in 411 journals. The median number of documents published in one journal was 1, and the mean number was 4.9, indicating a skewed distribution. The maximum number of publications was 217 in Critical Care Medicine journal. The nine important journals were NEJM , JAMA , Critical Care Medicine , Critical Care , Intensive Care Medicine , Pediatrics, British Medical Journal ( BMJ ), the Lancet and Chest ( Figure 1 ). The number of highly cited articles published in these nine journals generally followed a normal distribution across years. The number of publications in the Lancet increased initially, with a peak in the year of 2,000, and then went down.

Number of highly cited articles published in major journals across years. The top nine important journals for the publication of highly-cited critical care literature were NEJM , JAMA , Critical Care Medicine , Critical Care , Intensive Care Medicine , Pediatrics , British Medical Journal ( BMJ ), the Lancet and Chest .

Leading contributors of the highly cited articles

Of the 2,000 highly cited articles, Bellomo R contributed the most [30], followed by Vincent JL [29], Bernard GR [21], Angus DC [17], and Reinhart K [17] ( Figure 2 ). The United State of America contributed more than half (50.7%) of the highly cited articles, followed by Canada (8.4%), France (7.2%), Germany (4.3%), Australia (3.4%), Spain (3.2%), Italy (3.0%), Netherlands (2.4%), Belgium (2.2%), Switzerland (1.8%), Sweden (1.4%) and China (1.0%), as shown in Figure 3 .

Leading contributors of highly cited articles. Of the 2,000 highly cited articles, Bellomo R contributed the most [30], followed by Vincent JL [29], Bernard GR [21], Angus DC [17], and Reinhart K [17].

Number of articles across countries. The United States contributed more than half (50.7%) of the highly cited articles, followed by Canada (8.4%), France (7.2%), Germany (4.3%), Australia (3.4%), Spain (3.2%), Italy (3.0%), Netherlands (2.4%), Belgium (2.2%), Switzerland (1.8%), Sweden (1.4%) and China (1.0%).

The Lotka’s law was employed to explore the frequency of the publications by the authors in the field of CCM ( Table 2 ). The beta coefficient was 2.8 (P=0.001 for two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test between the empirical and the theoretical Lotka’s law distribution with Beta =2) and the constant C was 0.52. The goodness of fit of the empirically fitted model was optimal, as represented by the R-square value of 0.96. The meaning of the result is that authors making 2, 3 and 4 documents can be estimated with, and, respectively. The constant C was described in the method section that the number of authors making 1 documents accounted for 0.52 of the total number of authors.

Text mining of index keywords

A total of 1,919 keywords were identified in the 2,000 analyzed documents. These keywords appeared in the articles for a median of 40 times (IQR: 27–56 times). The occurrence of the keywords in the cumulative number of articles by year is shown in Figure 4 . Keywords such as human, female, male, humans, priority journal and articles appeared most frequently in CCM literature. Figure 5 shows the co-occurrence of these keywords with the Fruchterman-Reingold layout. The size of the nodes represents the frequency of occurrence. The edges between the nodes indicate their co-occurrence in the same article. Studies involving human subject were the most common literature type. Sepsis was a major research topic that co-occurred with keywords such as disease severity, nonhuman, risk assessment and practice guidelines. The Walktrap algorithm identified two clusters for the keywords pool. The two clusters were represented by blue and yellow colors in the nodes, and also by the shaded area. The blue cluster involves clinical trials investigating effective of a treatment on clinical outcomes. The yellow cluster involves studies investigating risk factors or disease severity ( Figure 5 ).

The occurrence of keywords in cumulative number of articles by year. It showed that keywords such as human, female, male, humans, priority journal and articles appeared most frequently in CCM literature. CCM, critical care medicine.

Co-occurrence of keywords with Fruchterman-Reingold layout. The size of nodes represents the frequency of occurrence. The edges between nodes indicate their co-occurrence in the same document. It showed that studies involving human subject were the most common literature type. Sepsis was a major research area, and the word sepsis co-occurred with keywords such as disease severity, nonhuman, risk assessment and practice guideline. The Walktrap algorithm identified two clusters from the keywords pool. The two clusters were represented by blue and yellow colors in the nodes. The blue cluster involved clinical trials investigating effective of a treatment on clinical outcomes. The yellow cluster involved studies investigating risk factors or disease severity studies.

Several clusters can be identified from Figure 6 . There was a cluster involving the studies of diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases in CCM. Another cluster is related to the clinical trials investigating risk factors of mortality outcome. However, sepsis and septic shock constituted a small cluster.

Heat map and hierarchical analysis of keywords. There was a cluster involving the study of diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases in critical care medicine. Another cluster is clinical trials investigating risk factors of mortality outcome. Sepsis and septic shock formed a smaller cluster.

A word cloud graph ( Figure 7 ) was created by excluding general terms such as human, female, male, priority journal, humans, article, adult and age. The word cloud shows the frequency of occurrence of a keyword. Keywords such as “intensive care unit”, “mortality”, “critical illness” and “length of stay” were the most commonly occurring.

Word cloud showing the frequency of the occurrence of a keyword. Keywords such as “intensive care unit”, “mortality”, “critical illness” and “length of stay” were the most commonly occurred keywords.

Our study included 2,000 most cited articles in the field of CCM. These documents were cited by a median of 386 times [interquartile range (IQR): 308–562 times]. The most highly cited article was the one developed the APACHE II score ( 15 ); the score was the most widely used for assessment of disease severity in critical care benchmarking and clinical studies. Some clinical practice guidelines involving sepsis and acute renal failure were among the top 10 most cited articles ( 18 , 19 , 23 ). The most important journal for publishing highly cited critical care documents was the journal CCM, which published 217 highly cited documents. The nine important journals for the publication of critical care highly cited literature were NEJM , JAMA , CCM , Critical Care , Intensive Care Medicine , Pediatrics , British Medical Journal , the Lancet and Chest . Our bibliometric analysis focused primarily on the keywords of the included articles. The most frequently used keywords were human, female, male, humans, priority journal and articles in the CCM literature. Some study clusters such as studies involving diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases, and sepsis and septic shock were identified by hierarchical analysis.

Bibliometric analysis has also been performed in the past in many areas of CCM such as on severe traumatic brain injury by Li and colleagues ( 6 ). In that study, the authors provided general descriptive data on the 100 top cited articles on severe traumatic brain injury. Their top 100 articles were cited on average 326.4 times, which approximated to the statistics in our study. Since our topic of bibliometric analysis was broader, our study has more highly cited articles than in Li’s study. Tao and colleagues reviewed the top 50 cited clinical papers on the topic of sepsis and found that the number of citations ranged from 372 to 2,932, with a mean of 678 citations per article. The 50 top cited articles were published in 17 journals, with the NEJM and JAMA were at the top of the list ( 7 ). In our analysis, the top cited article was published in the Critical Care Medicine journal, followed by NEJM and Chest . The Critical Care Medicine journal published the largest number of highly cited articles. In another bibliometric analysis investigating the top 100 cited articles in acute kidney injury, Liu and colleagues found that the top 100 articles originated from 15 countries, led by the US (n=81) ( 8 ). This is consistent with our study that authors from the US published more than half of the most highly cited articles in general.

Keywords analysis has yet been performed in the previously mentioned bibliometric analyses. The Walktrap algorithm was employed in our study to find clusters with the most connections. We found that a major cluster is a group of clinical studies that investigated therapeutic interventions on clinical outcomes. Clinical trials in critical care involve a heterogeneous subject population, imposing a greater challenge for investigators. Therefore, a simple clinical question usually requires extensively external validations because the characteristics of critically ill patients can vary remarkably across institutions and countries. For example, the EGDT was initially found to be beneficial for septic shock ( 16 ), which however, was not verified in subsequent clinical trials ( 24 - 26 ). This reflects the complexity of the intervention, as well as the heterogeneity of critically ill patients ( 27 ). Thus, results from clinical trials are always considered first to make the treatment standards for a disease process. As a result, efficacy trials are among the most common types of literature cited in in CCM.

Lotka’s law is an important index in bibliometric analysis, which investigates the relationship between the number of publications and authors. In Lotka’s seminal paper {Lotka:1926vc}, he found that “ the number (of authors) making contributions is about 1/x 2 of those making one; and the proportion of all contributors, that make a single contribution, is about 60 percent ”. Originally developed in chemistry and physics in early 20th century ( 28 ), the Lotka’s law is also called as the inverse square law. In the field of library and information studies, the values of n and c were assigned to be 2.1 and 0.6418 (64.18%) respectively, which conformed to Lotka’s law. In a 2008 article by Askew et al. {Askew:2008kd}, the authors concluded that “ Lotka’s law can be used in library and information studies as a standardized means of measuring author publication productivity which will lead to findings that are comparable on many levels ” ( 29 ). In the field of CCM, the n and c value differed significantly from the Lotka’s law, which may not be suitable for the measurement of authors’ productivity.

This study has limitations. The contributions of authors were not equal in a given article. However, there was no objective index to measure relative contribution of an author; thus, this factor was not investigated in the present study. The bibliographic database used in our study was Scopus, whose indexed journals may not cover all in the field of CCM, and the results may be different from analysis based on other bibliographic databases. Although Web of Science is well known for its high-quality inclusion criteria for journals, Scopus includes more source titles and is more likely to reflect bibliometric performance. CCM includes many sub-specialties such as acute kidney injury, sepsis and organ dysfunctions. Including all sub-specialties may mask some characteristics of bibliometric profile. Future studies may focus on specific sub-specialties of CCM by using co-occurrence and cluster analysis.

In conclusion, this study performed bibliometric analyses of 2,000 top cited articles in the field of CCM. The most highly cited article was about the description of APACHE II score. Some hot spots such as blood glucose control, sepsis, septic shock, mortality was identified via co-occurrence and clustering analysis. Author’s productivity differs significantly when analyzed by the Lotka’s law.

Acknowledgements

Funding: This study was supported by funding from Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (No. LGF18H150005) to Z Zhang.

Conflicts of Interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.