The 100 most cited articles have fewer citations than other bibliometric articles: A pairwise comparison using a...

More than 400 articles with the title of 100 top-cited articles (Top100) have been published in PubMed. It is unknown whether their citations are fewer (or more) than those found in other bibliometric studies (Nontop100). After determining article themes using coword analysis, a temporal bubble graph (TBG) was used to verify the hypothesis that the Top100 had fewer citations than the Nontop100.

Using the Web of Science core collection, the top 50 most cited articles were compiled by Top100 and Nontop100, respectively, based on the research area of biomedicine and bibliometrics only. Coword analysis was used to extract themes. The study results were displayed using 6 different visualizations, including charts with bars, pyramids, forests, clusters, chords, and bubbles. Mean citations were compared between Top100 and Nontop100 using the bootstrapping method.

There were 18 citations in total for the 2 sets of the 50 most cited articles (range 1-134; 5 and 26.5 for Top100 and Nontop100, respectively). A significant difference in mean citations was observed between the 2 groups of Top100 and Nontop100 based on the bootstrapping method (3, 95% confidence interval: [1.18, 4.82]; 26.5, 95% confidence interval: [23.82, 29.18], P < .001). The 11 themes were clustered using coword analysis and applied to a TBG, which is composed of 4 dimensions: themes, years, citations and groups of articles. Among the 2 groups, the majority of articles were published in the journal of Medicine (Baltimore), with 9 and 7, respectively.

Eleven themes were identified as a result of this study. In addition, it reveals distinct differences between the 2 groups of Top100 and Nontop100, with the former containing more recently published articles and the latter containing more citations for articles. Clinical and research clinicians and researchers can use bibliometric analysis to appraise published literature and to understand the scientific landmark using TBG in bibliometrics.