Response to Comments on "The 100 Most Cited Articles on Lumbar Spinal Stenosis: A Bibliometric Analysis." Global Spine J by Chen Y et al.

To the Editor,

At the outset, we would like to thank the authors of the letter for taking interest in our research. However, we would like to clarify and answer the points raised. As mentioned in our article, we used the following search command: *lumbar spinal stenosis* OR *lumbar stenosis* OR *lumbar stenosis disorders* and conducted the search in “basic search” feature under the “title” field with a time limit from January 1, 2000, until November 1, 2019 (a span of 20 years) from Web of Science (WOS). Chen Y kindly noted that he repeated this search process and got a totally different result of the 100 most cited articles on lumbar spinal stenosis (LSS). In our study, we search literatures on WOS in “Web of Science Core Collection,” not in “All Databases,” which contributed to the mentioned difference. In addition, Chen Y also recommended using title-specific search for literature search strategy which may be much better. This a good advice. However, there is no standard agreement on whether to use “title-specific search” or “topic-specific search.” In future studies, the two methods can also be combined, which may better improve the test efficiency.

Once again, we would like to thank the authors of the letter for their keen interest and valuable suggestions for our research and hope our response satisfies their queries and benefits the well learned readers of this prestigious journal.