The Top 100 Most-Cited Articles on Arthroscopy: Most Popular Topic Is Rotator Cuff Rather Than Cartilage in the Last...

To highlight the characteristics of the 100 most-cited articles on arthroscopy and provide the variation trend of citation rate among the top 25 articles in the past 9 years. We further analyzed the topics of interest in the past or currently.

The Thomson ISI Web of Science database was used to identify arthroscopy-related articles that were published from 1950 to March 31, 2020. The 100 most-cited articles were selected for further analysis. In addition, author key words of the articles that published in the recent 5 years were further analyzed.

Mean of citations was 433.59 ± 400.73. The publication year ranged from 1980 to 2013. Most articles were focused on cartilage lesions and treatments (26%). A large proportion of articles were published in the 2000s (61%). Arthroscopy-the Journal of Arthroscopic and Related Surgery (23%) was the most popular journal. One half of the articles originated from the United States. The most prolific institution and first author were the Steadman Philippon Research Institute (5%) and Marc J. Philippon (4%), respectively. Most of the articles were Level IV evidence (33%). The citation rate increased by 131% from the previous top 25 articles published in 2011. A growth trend can be seen in the citation density over time. "Shoulder" (occurrences = 535) was the most used joint key word and "rotator cuff" (342) was the most used key word of research objective in the last 5 years, whereas "cartilage" only occurred 262 times.

Based on bibliometric analysis of the 100 most-cited articles on arthroscopy combined with network analysis of the whole articles that published in the recent 5 years, the topic of most interest in the recent 5 years was rotator cuff rather than cartilage. The number of citations among the 25 most-cited articles is growing rapidly and has at least doubled in size on average in the past 9 years. Citation density among the 100 most-cited articles on arthroscopy has seen a growth trend.

This article clarifies the characteristics of the 100 most-cited papers and provides guidance on the topics of interest in the past or currently as a roadmap for future research on arthroscopy.