The one-hundred most-cited articles focused on thyroid research: a bibliometric analysis

INTRODUCTION: The number of citations that an article has received reflects its impact on a particular research area. EVIDENCE ACQUISITION: We determined the one-hundred most-cited articles in thyroid research via the Institute for Scientific Information Web of Knowledge database, using the search term. The following parameters were used to analyze the characteristics of the 100 most-cited articles: publication year, journal (including subject category and impact factor), number of citations and annual citations, authors, department, institution, country, type of study, and topic. EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS: The number of citations for the 100 most-cited articles ranged from 2521 to 412 (mean, 643.4) and the number of annual citations ranged from 392.9 to 7.1 (mean, 38.0). The majority of articles were published in 2000-2009 (32%), published in endocrinology journals (29%), originated in the USA (70%), were clinical observation study (31%), and dealt with nodular thyroid disease (32%). Department of Internal Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Department of Internal Medicine, Ohio State University College of Medicine (N.= 6 each) were the leading institutions and Mazzaferri EL (N.= 7) was the most prolific author. CONCLUSIONS: Our study presents a detailed list and analysis of the 100 most-cited thyroid research articles, which provides a unique insight into the historical development in this field.