The 100 most cited papers in nasopharyngeal carcinoma between 2000 and 2019: a bibliometric study

BACKGROUND: To identify the 100 most-cited papers that have contributed to the understanding and treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). METHODS: We searched the NPC-related papers between 2000 and 2019 using the Web of Science database on October 12, 2022. Papers were identified in descending order according to the number of citations. The top 100 papers were analyzed. RESULTS: These 100 most cited papers on NPC have been cited for a total of 35,273 times, with a median number of citations of 281 times. There were 84 research papers and 16 review papers. The Journal of Clinical Oncology (n=17), International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics (n=13), and Cancer Research (n=9) published the most papers. Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention, Lancet, Cancer Cell, Molecular Cancer, and the New England Journal of Medicine had the largest average citations per paper. China contributed the most papers (n=71), followed by USA (n=13), Singapore (n=4) and, France (n=4). There were 55 clinical research papers and 29 laboratory research papers. Intensity-modulated radiation therapy technology (n=13), concurrent chemoradiotherapy (n=9), and neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (n=5) were the top three research topics. Epstein-Barr virus-related genes (n=9) and noncoding RNA (n=8) were the research domains in laboratory research papers. The top three contributors were Jun Ma (n=9), Anthony T C Chan (n=8), and Anne Wing-Mui Lee (n=6). CONCLUSIONS: This study provides an overview of the major areas of interest in the field of NPC with bibliometric analyses. This analysis recognizes some important contributions in the field of NPC and stimulates future investigations in the scientific community.