Citation classics: the 50 most cited articles in surgery in Asia

The term 'citation classics' is used for highly cited papers in the scientific literature. It was aimed to understand the current landscape of academic surgery and the quality of the scientific contribution of authors belonging to Asia using citation classics.

We searched the WoS core collection database under the category 'surgery' to include the 50 most cited articles whose lead author was affiliated to an Asian country during the research period. We noted the following characteristics for each article: total citations, average cita- tions per year, year of publication, publishing journal, institution and country, journal quartile and impact factor, authorship, field of surgical research. Results were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics v26.

The number of citations ranged from 447 to 1170 (mean +/- SD is 616.9 +/- 150.16) and citations per year ranged from 10.04 to 98.17 (mean +/- SD is 30.87 +/- 17.27). Most productive decade was 1991-2000 (n= 19 articles). Majority of the articles were published in 'Annals of Surgery' (28%). Four authors contributed two or more articles as lead author with 'Poon RTP' taking the lead. Japan's contribution was highest (60%) followed by China and its dependents' (26%). University of Hong Kong was the leading institution (n= 7). Observational study was the most commonly used design (n= 24). Most papers belonged to gastrointestinal surgery (n= 28) and surgical oncology (n= 26). 66% articles originated from a single institution, 22% had inter-institutional collaboration and 12% had national collaboration from countries outside Asia.

The study identified the most influential papers in surgery from Asia. This should provoke interest in academic surgery and research col- laboration with other nations in Asia and the rest of the world.