The 100 most-cited articles on prenatal diagnosis: A bibliometric analysis

BACKGROUND: The number of citations a published article receives can be used to demonstrate its impact on a field of study. The objective of this study was to identify and characterize the 100 most-cited research articles (T100) published on prenatal diagnosis. METHODS: The Web of Science (WOS) database was searched for papers on prenatal diagnosis published between 1900 and 2018. The 100 most-cited original articles and reviews were recorded. Each eligible paper was reviewed for authors, journal name, year of publication, country, institution, total citations, citation density, H-index, research field, article type, and keywords. RESULTS: The T100 were published between 1972 and 2015 with a mean of 332.7 citations per paper (range: 196–1254). Most of the T100 were published between 1990 and 2005, in 35 journals led by New England Journal of Medicine (n = 14) followed by Lancet (n = 10), and Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (n = 8). Studies on method application, which promotes field development, were the majority article type. The team of Lo YM featured prominently in the field, and the United States of America, United Kingdom, and Hong Kong, China were the leading countries/regions. Frequency of cooperation was also highest among these 3 regions. Hierarchical cluster analysis produced 4 groups of keywords. CONCLUSION: Our analysis provides a historical perspective on scientific progress in prenatal diagnosis and may assist clinicians and researchers in assessing the quality of research over the past 50 years. It also provides concise information to guide future research.