Review article
Top 50 most cited articles on primary tumors of the spine

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocn.2017.02.019Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Analysis of citation trends was used to identify the top 50 most cited articles on primary tumors of the spine.

  • The most productive year for top cited articles was 1997 with 6 publications.

  • The most frequent journals included Neurosurgery, Journal of Neurosurgery, and Spine.

  • Tomita et al’s 1997 article on Total en bloc spondylectomy was the most cited article.

Abstract

Citation analysis was performed in order to identify the top 50 most cited articles pertaining to the field of primary spinal tumors. This collection of articles highlights important trends in the neurosurgical literature.

We searched the Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge in order to identify articles pertaining to primary tumors of the spine. Impertinent articles were removed. The top 50 most cited articles were identified. Thereafter, article characteristics were determined including article type, article topic, level of evidence, and citation rate.

The selected articles were published between 1951 and 2008. The most productive year was 1997 with 6 publications. The top 50 articles were published in twenty-two different journals, most commonly in Neurosurgery (12), Journal of Neurosurgery (8), and Spine (6). The most frequently cited article was by Tomita et al. written in 1997 which described total en bloc spondylectomy as a novel surgical technique in management of primary tumors of the vertebral column.

We identified the 50 most-cited articles in the field of primary spinal tumors. This collection of articles serves as a reference for recognizing impactful studies in the field.

Introduction

Citation analysis allows the identification of studies that have influenced a given field. Although this methodology has been applied to spinal oncology in general [1], no previous study has specifically investigated the field of primary tumors of the spine. Given that primary and metastatic tumors of the spine are distinct pathologies with different management schemes, we aimed to perform a citation analysis of the primary tumors of the spine only. In this study, we identify and discuss the most cited articles published in the field.

Section snippets

Methods

We searched all databases within Thomson Reuters’s Web of Science for articles pertaining to primary tumors of the spine. The search was limited to articles published in English, and between 2016 and 1945, which was the earliest date available in the search engine. The search command was entered under the “topic” category as follows:

(spine or spinal or vertebral or column or canal) and (primary or tumor).

Impertinent articles were excluded. Total citation count was determined after accounting

Results

The results of the search included 4,571 articles. The 50 most cited articles relevant to primary spine tumors were included in the final list. Information collected on each article including their references, article topic, article summary, article type, level of evidence, total number of citations, and citation rate (average citations per year), are shown in Table 1. Publication years ranged from 1951 to 2008 with 1997 (6) and 1989 (5) yielding the most articles (Fig. 1). The oldest article

Discussion

The present study utilizes citation analysis – the measure of an articles impact based on the number of times it has been cited [12] –to identify the articles, authors, and journals that reflect innovations in the field of primary tumors of the spine and provide historical perspectives on the trends and topics that have been the focus of research in the field.

Studies using citation analysis as a bibliometric indicator serve various functions for readers. For the vast majority, they serve as a

Conclusion

We identified the 50 most cited articles related to the primary tumors the spine using citation analysis. The information collected can be used to identify the trends of research focus in the field of primary tumors of the spine and provide readers with an understanding of the studies that have impacted the field. Distinct absence of level I evidence and predominance of case series and level IV evidence studies is reflective of the rarity and heterogeneity of the primary tumors of the spine,

Funding statement

This research did not receive any grants from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Disclosures

The authors do not have any personal or institutional interest with regards to the authorship and/or publication of this manuscript.

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