Abstract
BACKGROUND: The total citations that a peer-reviewed manuscript has is often used to measure the impact that a publication has in its respective field of study. Both the citation count and total number of publications are often used as measures of academic productivity and success. This issue has been previously investigated in the field of tobacco control research. Given the changing landscape in the field of tobacco research since 2004, we sought to re-examine this issue. The study purpose was to identify the 100 top-cited tobacco-related articles published since 2005, and to categorize and describe the fields of study represented in these articles. METHODS: We searched the Scopus library database to determine the citations of the top 100 tobacco-related articles. Information was gathered on: title, number of authors, publication year, journal name and impact factor, country of origin, article type and subject category. Articles were selected and analyzed by two independent investigators. RESULTS: We identified the 100 top-cited articles published in 58 journals, led by The New England Journal of Medicine (8) and Lancet (6), between 2005 and 2014. The United States was the most common country of origin for the highly-cited articles. The top article types were observation (27%), basic science (26%), and review articles (24%). The most common article subject area was medicine (74%). A statistically significant association was found between the journal impact factor and the number of top 100 cited articles (p = 0.03). CONCLUSIONS: This review may be helpful to identify articles that may be contributing to the conduct of current and future tobacco research. The analysis can be used as a reference to review and evaluate the publications that are making a high impact in the field of tobacco research.