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The most cited neurosurgical publications in the Literature

Measuring the academic strength of a publication is a complicated matter that has become a topic of interest in recent years. The impact factor (IF) of a journal and the Hirsh-index (H-index) of a researcher rely on article citation numbers which in the absence of more reliable methods, may be taken as a reflection of the academic strength of the article. Neurosurgeons are aware of many of the famous articles in their field however to our knowledge there has been no attempt at identifying the most cited neurosurgical articles in the literature that can be considered as the elite neurosurgical publications. Using the article citation numbers provided by Google Scholar in January 2010, we identified and reviewed the top 100 and the top 15 most cited articles which were published in neurosurgical, neurosciences and other medical journals that were written primarily by or in collaboration with neurosurgeons. The citation numbers of the top 100 articles ranged from 5215 to 371 (median 466) and the top 15 ranged from 5215 to 908 (median 1265). The top 100 most cited articles were published in journals with IF ranging from 1.6 to 50 (median 2.1) while the top 15 articles were published in journals with IF of similar range but a median of 4.1. All the articles were published in journals that were launched before 1985 with 83% of the top 100 being in journals that are more than 60 years old. The characteristics of the two groups are summarized (Table I). Amongst the 100 most cited neurosurgical articles there was a predominance of publications in the Journal of Neurosurgery (58%), from the USA (67%), during the period 1981–2000 (74%) and on vascular and trauma-related work (70%). While amongst the 15 most cited neurosurgical articles there was good representation of articles from the USA (62.5%), the UK (25%), in the New England Journal of Medicine (IF1⁄4 50) and the Lancet (IF1⁄4 28.4) (37.5%), before 1991 (87.5%) and articles describing a new scale or technique (50%) or controlled trials (31%). It is of interest that the top 5 most cited neurosurgical articles in the literature were: