Bibliometric analysis of the top 100 cited cardiovascular articles

The number of citations an article receives is an important indication of its impact and contribution to the clinical world. There is a paucity of literature concerning top article citations in cardiology. The main objective of this investigation was to bridge this gap and to provide readers a practical guide in evaluating the cardiovascular literature. Scopus Library database was searched to determine the citations of all published cardiovascular articles. One hundred two journals were included in our investigation under the Institute of Science Information Web of Science subject category "cardiology, cardiovascular, and heart." We did not apply any time or study-type restriction in our search. The top 100 cited articles were selected and analyzed by 2 independent investigators. The journal with the highest number of top 100 cited articles was Circulation with 36, followed by 28 in the European Heart Journal. A statistically significant association was found between the journal impact factor and the number of top 100 cited articles (p <0.005). United States had the highest number of articles (49). Contrary to bibliometric analyses published in other medical fields, the largest subset of the cardiology articles (n = 42) was published in the 5-year period from 2006 to 2010. General medical journals such as The Lancet (n = 4) and The New England Journal of Medicine (n = 1) contributed only 5 articles to the list despite their extremely high impact factors. In conclusion, our analysis provides an insight on the citation frequency of top cited articles published in cardiovascular medicine to help recognize the quality of the works, discoveries, and the trends steering cardiology.