Evaluation of the 101 most cited immunology articles: A bibliometric analysis

In our study, the 101 most cited publications in the field of “Immunology” in the Web of Science (WoS) database were evaluated bibliometrically. The “WoS” database “advanced mode" was used in this study. A search was conducted in the field of “Immunology.” The top 101 most-cited publications were then identified. The total number of citations of the publications, annual number of citations, authors, information of the study, and journal were analyzed. There were 1,191,384 publications in the field of “Immunology” in the WoS between 1975 and 2023. The total citation average of the 101 most cited publications was 3765.69 ± 4142.7 and the annual citation average was 180.91 ± 133.1. The first 3 subjects in the first 101 articles were listed as “apoptosis–cancer immunology” (14.85%), “monocyte-macrophage”(14.58%), and “T-cell”(13.86%), respectively. The 3 journals in which the studies were published the most were determined as “Annual Review of Immunology” (18.81%), “Nature Reviews Immunology” (17.82%) and “Nature Immunology” (10.89%). Only 1.98% of publications were published after 2014. A significant relationship was found between the study type, impact factor of the journal, continent of journal and publisher, funding status, year of publication, and number of citations per year (P < .05). Our study is the first to analyze the top 101 most-cited studies in the field of “immunology" and their citation characteristics. The study’s journals, publishers, publication features, funding status, and publication year affect the number of citations per year.