Loonen Martijn P J, Hage J Joris, Kon Moshe
Utrecht and Amsterdam, The Netherlands From the Departments of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at University Medical Center Utrecht and The Netherlands Cancer Institute-Antoni van Leeuwenhoek Hospital.
Plast Reconstr Surg. 2008 May;121(5):320e-327e. doi: 10.1097/PRS.0b013e31816b13a9.
Citation of published articles by peers provides an indication of the relevance of the scientific work. Still, it is unknown what kinds of plastic surgery articles are cited most often. The authors set out to identify the characteristics of the 50 top-cited articles as published in four international, peer-reviewed, PubMed-indexed general plastic surgery journals.
The 50 most-cited articles were identified in each of the following journals: Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the British Journal of Plastic Surgery, the Annals of Plastic Surgery, and the Scandinavian Journal of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and Hand Surgery. These 200 articles were ranked after their citation index, defined as the mean number of times they were cited per year during the first 16 years after publication. The top-50 articles thus ranked were analyzed for citation and journal distribution, geographic and institutional origin, surgical and anatomical subject, and level of evidence.
Forty-one of the 50 top-cited articles (82 percent) were published in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and 35 articles (70 percent) originated from institutions within the United States. Most of the articles dealt with the reconstruction of acquired defects (45 percent) and with basic or experimental research (41 percent). Research that offered means for clinical improvement, rather than a high level of evidence or the results of multi-institutional collaboration, was most often cited.
An article featuring a clinical or nonclinical innovation, observation, or discovery that leads to clinical improvement has the best potential to become a "classic."
同行对已发表文章的引用表明了该科学工作的相关性。然而，尚不清楚哪种整形外科文章被引用得最为频繁。作者着手确定在四种国际同行评审、被PubMed收录的普通整形外科期刊上发表的50篇被引用次数最多的文章的特征。
在以下每种期刊中确定被引用次数最多的50篇文章：《整形与重建外科》《英国整形外科杂志》《整形外科学年鉴》以及《斯堪的纳维亚整形与重建外科及手外科杂志》。这200篇文章按照其引用指数进行排名，引用指数定义为发表后的前16年中每年被引用的平均次数。对如此排名的前五十篇文章进行引用情况和期刊分布、地理和机构来源、手术和解剖主题以及证据水平的分析。
50篇被引用次数最多的文章中有41篇（82%）发表于《整形与重建外科》，35篇文章（70%）来自美国境内的机构。大多数文章涉及后天缺损的重建（45%）以及基础或实验研究（41%）。那些提供临床改善方法而非高水平证据或多机构合作结果的研究最常被引用。
一篇展示临床或非临床创新、观察或发现并能带来临床改善的文章最有可能成为“经典”。
