Searching the Footprints of Pioneers on Neurology: A Bibliometric Analysis.

BACKGROUND: We identify the most cited articles that have influenced the clinical practices of neurologists.

METHODS: We first analyzed the top 100 cited articles published in 50 neurology journals with high impact factors. We collected all of the original articles on clinical neurology published in all 554 medical journals. The Institute for Scientific Information Web of Science search tools were used to identify the top 100 cited articles in the database of Journal Citation Reports since 1950, which were then manually reviewed to discover their contents.

RESULTS: In the first part of analysis, the top 100 cited articles were all published in 17 journals, with 26 articles published in Neurology. The most frequent topic subject of neurodegeneration appeared in 40 articles. The second part of the analysis revealed that the top 100 cited articles were also all published in 17 journals, with 30 articles published in New England Journal of Medicine. In contrast to the first part of the analysis, stroke was the most frequent topic subject (in 38 articles).

CONCLUSIONS: Our bibliometric analysis has yielded 2 detailed lists of the top 100 cited articles that were listed separately using different methods. This approach can provide information about the trends and academic achievements in the field of clinical neurology.