The Top 100 Most Cited Papers in 2022 on Global Health indexed in Web of Science

BACKGROUND: Even if it is a controversial topic, citation counts are frequently used as an indicator of how popular and valuable published articles are. In this study, we aim to identify and analyze the characteristics of the most cited articles in the global health area. METHODS: We searched the Web of Science (WoS) database with the keywords: (TS=global health) AND (PY = 2022) AND (SU=public health). We filtered highly cited articles and selected the top 100 for our analysis. Scopus was used for extracting the journals’ CiteScore 2022 metrics. We conducted frequency analysis and Spearman's correlation test wit using SPSS 27. RESULTS: Most of the articles were about COVID-19 (37%) and environmental health (36%). One of four studies about COVID-19 was investigating COVID-19's effect on the mental health of adults or children. Affiliations of the first authors were mostly from (USA 21%) or China (20%) and they were followed by India (10%). Most of the papers were reviews (38%). The other frequent study types were prevalence studies (12%), estimation studies (11%) and systematic reviews (9%). The median of the WoS core citations was 48.5 (min. 33, max 770) and overall it was 49 (min. 33, max. 792). The papers were mostly published in Lancet (7%), Science of the Total Environment (7%) and Environmental Research (6%). CiteScore median for the journals was 16.7 (min 3.8, max 131.8). There were no correlations between WoS core citations of the papers and CiteScore of the journals (Correlation Coefficient=0.075, p = 0.459) and overall citations (Correlation Coefficient=0.083, p = 0.409). CONCLUSIONS: Most of the highly cited papers about global health in 2022 were published by the authors from USA and China, and the papers were mostly about COVID-19 and environmental health. The majority of the publications were reviews. This might refer to the lack of powerful original research on the topic. KEY MESSAGES: • Most of the highly cited papers about global health are reviews. • Our findings suggest there is no correlation between one paper’s citation number and the CiteScore of the journal that published it.