Naif M Alotaibi1, Farshad Nassiri2, Jetan H Badhiwala2, Christopher D Witiw2, George M Ibrahim3, R Loch Macdonald4, Andres M Lozano5. 1. Division of Neurosurgery, Department of Surgery, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Department of Neurosurgery, National Neuroscience Institute, King Fahad Medical City, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 2. Division of Neurosurgery, Department of Surgery, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 3. Division of Neurosurgery, Department of Surgery, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Electronic address: george.m.ibrahim@gmail.com. 4. Division of Neurosurgery, Department of Surgery, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Division of Neurosurgery, St. Michael's Hospital, Labatt Family Centre of Excellence in Brain Injury and Trauma Research, Keenan Research Centre for Biomedical Science, and the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's Hospital, Department of Surgery, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. 5. Division of Neurosurgery, Department of Surgery, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Division of Neurosurgery, Toronto Western Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: There is an abundance of articles published on aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH). Bibliometric analyses are helpful in determining the most impactful studies within a field. METHODS: An aSAH-specific search using a publicly accessible software search engine that indexes raw citations from Google Scholar was performed in August 2015. References were organized by number of citations, and the full length-articles for the top 100 cited papers were reviewed. Articles were categorized based on the focus of the paper. RESULTS: The top 100 articles were cited on average 654 times per paper. The Journal of Neurosurgery published the greatest number of top cited articles (33 of 100). Authors from North America published the majority (64%) of the top-cited articles and most publications were from the 1990s onwards. The most popular categories were "surgical and endovascular treatment" and "reviews, meta-analyses, and consensus guidelines." There has been a steady increase each decade in highly cited reviews and meta-analyses on aSAH since the 1960s. A total of 73 articles were cited more than 400 times and met the criteria to be considered a "citation classic." Compared with studies of citation numbers in other subspecialties of neurosurgery such as epilepsy and Parkinson disease, the impact of work in aSAH appeared to accrue fewer citations. CONCLUSIONS: The current report provides an analysis of the most influential works in aSAH to describe trends in highly cited research and to provide a comprehensive list of the most influential literature in the field.
BACKGROUND: There is an abundance of articles published on aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH). Bibliometric analyses are helpful in determining the most impactful studies within a field. METHODS: An aSAH-specific search using a publicly accessible software search engine that indexes raw citations from Google Scholar was performed in August 2015. References were organized by number of citations, and the full length-articles for the top 100 cited papers were reviewed. Articles were categorized based on the focus of the paper. RESULTS: The top 100 articles were cited on average 654 times per paper. The Journal of Neurosurgery published the greatest number of top cited articles (33 of 100). Authors from North America published the majority (64%) of the top-cited articles and most publications were from the 1990s onwards. The most popular categories were "surgical and endovascular treatment" and "reviews, meta-analyses, and consensus guidelines." There has been a steady increase each decade in highly cited reviews and meta-analyses on aSAH since the 1960s. A total of 73 articles were cited more than 400 times and met the criteria to be considered a "citation classic." Compared with studies of citation numbers in other subspecialties of neurosurgery such as epilepsy and Parkinson disease, the impact of work in aSAH appeared to accrue fewer citations. CONCLUSIONS: The current report provides an analysis of the most influential works in aSAH to describe trends in highly cited research and to provide a comprehensive list of the most influential literature in the field.