Abstract
Introduction Although bibliometric analyses have been performed in the past on cancer and genomics, little is known about the most frequently cited articles specifically related to cancer epigenetics. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to use citation count to identify those papers in the scientific literature that have made key contributions in the field of cancer epigenetics and identify key driving forces behind future investigations. Materials and methods The Thomas Reuters Web of Science services was queried for the years 1980-2018 without language restrictions. Articles were sorted in descending order of the number of times they were cited in the Web of Science database by other studies, and all titles and abstracts were screened to identify the research areas of the top 100 articles. The number of citations per year was calculated. Results We identified the 100 most-cited articles on cancer epigenetics, which collectively had been cited 147,083 times at the time of this writing. The top-cited article was cited 7,124 times, with an average of 375 citations per year since publication. In the period 1980-2018, the most prolific years were the years 2006 and 2010, producing nine articles, respectively. Twenty-eight unique journals contributed to the 100 articles, with the Nature journal contributing most of the articles (n=22). The most common country of article origin was the United States of America (n=78), followed by Germany (n=4), Switzerland (n=4), Japan (n=3), Spain (n=2), and United Kingdom (n=2). Conclusions In this study, the 100 most-cited articles in cancer epigenetics were examined, and the contributions from various authors, specialties, and countries were identified. Cancer epigenetics is a rapidly growing scientific field impacting translational research in cancer screening, diagnosis, classification, prognosis, and targeted treatments. Recognition of important historical contributions to this field may guide future investigations.