OBJECTIVE: Citation analysis can be used to evaluate an article's impact on its discipline. This study characterizes the most-cited articles related to skull base surgery. METHODS: The 100 most-cited skull base neurosurgery articles in all journals were examined. A separate listing of the top 100 most-cited articles in dedicated skull base journals was also examined. The following information was recorded for each article: number of authors, country of origin, citation-count adjusted for number of years in print, topic, and level of evidence. RESULTS: The 100 overall most-cited articles appeared in 25 journals. The top 100 most-cited articles in dedicated skull base journals appeared in 3 journals. Publication dates ranged from 1965-2006 for the overall list and 1993-2010 for the dedicated skull base list. Citations ranged from 11-59 (mean, 19) for the dedicated skull base list and 115-487 for the overall list (mean, 175). The average time-adjusted citation count was 8.4 for the overall list and 2 for the dedicated skull base journal list. CONCLUSIONS: An original article in a nondedicated skull base journal related to the subspecialty of skull base with a citation count of 150 or more and time-adjusted citation count of 10 can be considered a high-impact publication. An original article in a dedicated skull base periodical having a total citation count of 20 or more and an average citation count of 2 per year or more can be considered a high impact publication.