A historical perspective of pediatric publications: a bibliometric analysis.

The world of medical research is rapidly proliferating. Since 1945 there have been more than 40 million publications referenced on the Thompson Reuters Web of Science (WoS). Pediatric academia has been in existence since 1471 with Bagallarder’s Little Book on Disease in Children.1 However, pediatrics as a specialized field of medicine only developed in the mid-19th century. Archives in Pediatrics was the first pediatric journal and was established in 1884. The very first pediatric publication was “Convulsions in Children” by William T. Plant.2 Since then, the number of publications on the subject of pediatrics has dramatically expanded. There are now 191 journals solely dedicated to the specialty of pediatrics and in 2010 alone, more than 22 800 pediatric articles were published. Bibliometric methods, including citation analysis, have been used to evaluate trends in publications within specialties including neonatal surgery.3 They have also been used to examine highly cited articles within a specialty,4 providing insight into what types of article are of importance and interest to the readership. In this article, we identify and analyze the top 100 most frequently cited articles published in journals dedicated to pediatrics between 1945 and 2010. We identify and interpret the characteristics that mark these most-cited articles.