Top 100 cited articles in traumatology: A bibliometric analysis

Abstract

BACKGROUND: In this bibliometric study, we aimed to conduct multi-dimensional citation analysis of the top 100 cited articles in traumatology. METHODS: We analyzed the top 100 cited articles among 56.980 trauma articles published between 1975 and 2017, which we obtained from databases in Web of Science and PubMed based on their citation rates and publication years, countries of origin, institutions or organizations, the most common subjects, funding status, article types, and levels of evidence. RESULTS: In the top 100 cited articles, the number of total authors was 649 and average authorship was 6.49±5.46 (1–32); group author or study group number was eight, and the number of total collaborators was 1241. USA was the top country in terms of country of origin and institutions or organizations and also the number of proceedings papers in scientific activities. We found that 70 of the top 100 cited articles were supported by funding agencies in developed countries. In the present study, the three most common subjects were central nervous system trauma (21 articles), major trauma–hemorrhage–bleeding control–transfusion–early coagulopathy (18 articles), and trauma care and systems (eight articles), respectively. The average level of evidence of the top 100 cited articles was 2.45±1.05 (range: 1–4). We also found that 66 of the 100 most frequently cited articles in traumatology were published in scientific journals that had an impact factor of ≥2.6 (range: 2.648–72.406). We found that the most commonly preferred article type by authors is clinical research (92 articles) and sub-type is prospective comparative studies (27 articles). Evidence groups of classical papers in traumatology were B (54 articles), A (26 articles), and C (20 articles), respectively. CONCLUSION: Despite some flaws in determining the scientific values of articles, citation analysis of classical papers in traumatology can provide important scientific contributions.