The 100 Most Cited vs. Most Relevant Articles in the Journal of Neurosurgery: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Introduction The Journal of Neurosurgery (JNS) published its first volume in 1944 and has evolved into the top cited journal in the field of neurosurgery. The aim of this study was to determine and characterize the 100 most cited (based on the total number of citations) vs. most relevant (based on the number of citations per year) articles originating in JNS. Methods The top 100 most cited articles in JNS were determined by searching the Web of Science database. Citations per year were additionally calculated for the top 1000 articles by total citations to rank the 100 most relevant articles. Results The median number of total citations for the 100 most cited articles in JNS was 505 (range 383-2200), and the median number of citations per year for the 100 most relevant articles was 21.88 (range 17.31-82.61). The median year of publication for the 100 most cited and most relevant articles was 1990 and 1999, respectively (P < 0.0001). Most articles originated in the United States in both categories (72% and 71%, respectively). The most common topic of study was cerebrovascular on both lists, followed by trauma on the most cited list vs. tumor on the most relevant list. The most relevant list also contained considerably more articles with a higher level of evidence such as systemic reviews/meta-analyses and prospective studies. Conclusions This study highlights the key contributing factors to the growth and flourishing of JNS. It also reveals several discrepancies between the most cited and most relevant articles, with the latter including more recently published articles, more studies addressing tumor, and more level I/1 (NHMRC/CEBM) evidence. Bibliometric analysis serves as a useful tool for clinicians and researchers to appraise published literature and understand the scientific foundation of modern neurosurgery.

A Bibliometric Analysis of the Top Cited Articles in Sports and Exercise Medicine

“…A second limitation relates to the time of publication, with more recently published articles having an inherent disadvantage in terms of citation count. Given this disadvantage, potentially more relevant and highly influential articles published more recently 27 may not have made the 100 top cited articles list because they have not had enough time to accumulate the necessary number of citations. This type of citation analysis also does not account for self-citation, citation in textbooks or lectures, and the predilection of authors to cite articles that are published in the journals in which they hope to publish their own work.…”

Science mapping the most-cited publications on workplace learning

“…Bibliometric studies have been conducted in various fields; for instance, in medicine (Bayram et al , 2016; Kolkailah et al , 2018; Liu et al , 2019), business (Fellnhofer, 2019), management (Zupic and Čater, 2015), environment (Zhang et al , 2019) and education (Hallinger, 2019; Hallinger and Kovačević, 2019). Nonetheless, to find out if there exist any bibliometric studies conducted on the topic of workplace learning, during August 2019, an advanced search using the same parameters (and the term “bibliometric”) as our main data search was conducted in SCOPUS database.…”

A bibliometric analysis of the top 50 most cited articles published in the Dental Traumatology

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“…5 It serves to evaluate the clinical and scientific importance of a publication in a specific area of knowledge. 6 The topics, as well as study designs of the highly cited articles, have the potential to influence trends in clinical practice and future research. [7][8][9] Furthermore, citation analysis recognizes the significant contributions of particular authors, institutions, countries, and journals within a specific scientific community.…”