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Publication trends in the field of the cornea in the last 4 decades: a bibliometric study

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Abstract

Purpose

The objective of this bibliometric study was to identify the top 100 most-cited articles on the cornea published in the English language between 1980 and 2021 using multidimensional citation analysis.

Methods

The data were obtained from the Thomson Reuters Web of Science Core Collection and the PubMed databases. The top 100 articles in terms of citation number were identified and analyzed.

Results

A total of 40,792 articles related to the cornea were retrieved. The 100 most-cited articles were published between 1995 and 2000. The average time since publication was 19.64 ± 5.75 years. The mean impact factor of the journals was 10.27 ± 17.14 and the Q category of most journals was Q1. Ophthalmology was the journal with the most published articles (n = 10), which represented level 3 evidence. The three most common topics among the top 100 articles were treatment modality, histopathology, and diagnostic imaging. The most frequently mentioned treatments were related to limbal stem cell failure, crosslinking, and lamellar keratoplasty. We observed a negative correlation between the average number of citations per year and the time passed since publication (r = − 0.629; p = 0.001).

Conclusion

Our analysis of the top 100 most-cited articles on the cornea revealed scientific contributions, vital current data related to clinical implementations, and valuable insights into the current developments in ophthalmology. To our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate the most influential papers on the cornea, and our findings highlight the research quality and latest discoveries and trends in the management cornea diseases.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank to biostatistician Mehmet Karadag for their support in statistical analysis.

Funding

The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ophthalmology, Kanuni Sultan Suleyman Training and Research Hospital, Atakent Mh, Turgut Özal Bulvarı No: 46/1, 34303, Küçükçekmece, Istanbul, Turkey

    Sibel Zirtiloglu

  2. Department of Opticianry, Vocational School of Health Services, Gelisim University, 34310, Istanbul, Turkey

    Erkan Bulut

Authors
  1. Sibel Zirtiloglu
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  2. Erkan Bulut
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by SZ and EB. The first draft of the manuscript was written by SZ and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sibel Zirtiloglu.

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Conflict of interest

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Ethics approval

This study was conducted in accordance with the tenants of the Declaration of Helsinki. This study did not require ethics committee approval because it involved a bibliometric analysis of previously published studies for which ethics approval was already acquired.

Consent to participate

Patient data were not used in this study and therefore informed consent was not required.

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Zirtiloglu, S., Bulut, E. Publication trends in the field of the cornea in the last 4 decades: a bibliometric study. Int Ophthalmol 43, 3055–3065 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10792-023-02705-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10792-023-02705-2

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