Citation classics: ranking of the top 100 most cited articles in nephrology.

Background The number of citations of a scientific article is considered a weight of that work in the field of interest. Bibliometric analysis of the most cited articles conducted in some medical disciplines has identified the most relevant scientific contributions that pushed forward knowledge and clinical practice of that discipline. Methods We conducted a bibliometric analysis of the most cited articles in nephrology, by extracting relevant words that identify issues of nephrological interest and querying the Google Scholar database. A rank with the 100 most cited articles was obtained, based on the absolute number of citations. Articles were clustered in different areas of interest. Results Word(s) extracted from the Google Scholar database that restituted at least 100000 hits were 50. The extracted 100 most cited articles collected cumulatively >285000 citations. Nine subcategories were identified and the most populated one was Renal function assessment' (16 articles and 68000 citations, 24% of total). The other relevant group of articles (16, with 46652 citations) belonged to the category Randomized trials and pharmacology'. Almost 70% of the articles in the top 100 were published by eight major international journals. The top 100 list included 62 articles generated from USA scientists and the author with higher number of articles was A.S. Levey (10). Conclusions The top 100 list of articles in nephrology helps delineate the major interests of this medical discipline. Assessment of renal functions, probably for its multidisciplinary relevance, is the heaviest topic, based on number of citations.