Molecular plant immunity is a dynamic research field that broadly addresses how plants interact with their associated organisms and defend themselves against pests and pathogens. Here, we aimed at providing readers with a snapshot of influential molecular plant immunity research by identifying and analyzing 170 highly influential publications in molecular plant immunity (hereafter called HIPPYs) published in this field between 2000 and 2019. Our analysis draws a broad analytical knowledge of influential scientific advances in the field as well as of the research community that made them. We notably show that HIPPYs are shared by a small, structured, and connected research community. The HIPPYs address coherent research questions using a handful of key model objects (i.e., organisms or molecules) and report findings and concepts that contribute to our integrated understanding of the molecular interactions between plants and their associated organisms. Our 'HIP in' ('highly influential publication in' ...) method is easily transposable to other large research areas and may help early career researchers to gain a broader knowledge of their field of interest. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY 4.0 International license.
Keywords: Arabidopsis thaliana; Web of Science; bibliometric pipeline; microbe; plant defense; plant pathology; symbiont.