The most cited works in major depression: the 'Citation classics'

The biomedical literature is growing exponentially, with thousands of articles published each day. While the majority of published papers are of incremental value, every field also has a select, relatively small number of works that have presented important conceptual advances and have had a profound influence. We were interested in identifying such papers in the field of Major Depression.

To determine which and what type of articles in the field of Major Depression are citation classics, defined as having received equal to or exceeding 400 citations in the biomedical literature, as a surrogate marker for their impact in the field.

An online database of research publications was searched using a free, publicly accessible, and downloadable software. The terms "Depression" or "Depressive" were queried in the title of publications with no date restrictions. Out of scope publications not dealing with Major Depression or mood disorders were not considered.

243 citation classics representing the top cited manuscripts (approximately 0.1% of 240,000) in the field of Major Depression were identified. These highly cited works fell into six categories: scales/measures, medical psychiatry, clinical trials/management, mechanisms/translational studies, imaging investigations and epidemiological/population health studies. The journals in which citation classics are published are diverse, but typically are general psychiatric or medical publications.

Despite the size of the field, there is a relatively parsimonious collection of citation classics in the field of Major Depression. These deal primarily with the mechanisms and epidemiology of the disease, with papers dealing with depression management accounting for the fastest growing group of citation classics.