A Bibliometric Analysis of the 100 Most Cited Articles in Cornea

Abstract

To identify the 100 most-cited articles in cornea to provide a bibliometric perspective of highly relevant works in recent years. The ISI Web of Knowledge database was selected as a bibliographic database to search for cornea-related articles published between 2013 and 2021. The search was performed in June 2022 and was conducted in all medical and scientific journals available on the database. The search was also refined to include articles in the “Ophthalmology” category. Most articles were published in Ophthalmology (22%), followed by the American Journal of Ophthalmology (15%), Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science (12%), and Cornea (8%). The corresponding authors were from 22 countries, predominantly from the United States (22%), China (14%), and Japan (11%). The most common study types include case series (31%), randomized clinical trials (15%), and cross-sectional studies (12%). The major topics of these articles included dry eye disease (19%), crosslinking (16%), keratoconus (12%), and keratoplasty (11%). There was a statistically significant correlation between the number of years since publication and the number of citations per year (Pearson's correlation coefficient = −0.80, P < 0.001). COVID-related articles (5%) also demonstrated significantly higher numbers of citations per year compared to the rest of the articles (mean numbers of citations per year: 69.1 vs. 18.5, P = 0.003). There were 16 institutions that produced more than 1 article in the top 100 articles. This bibliometric study provided a unique perspective of the most relevant trends and themes of research in cornea in recent years.