Background: Parkinson's disease (PD), the second most common neurodegenerative disease, has serious clinical effects. Research on PD is increasing, but the quantity and quality of this research have not been reported.
Methods: To analyze the most-cited articles on PD and provide information about developments in this field, we searched for articles in the Web of Science for the keyword "Parkinson*" in the title. We selected the 100 most-cited articles and evaluated information including citation number, publication time, journal, impact factor, authors, original country, institution of corresponding author, and study type.
Results: Citation numbers for the 100 most-cited articles ranged from 669 to 6902, with a median of 944. The 100 articles were published from 1967 to 2009, with most appearing between 1996 and 2000 (n = 24) and 2001 to 2005 (n = 27). The publications appeared in a total of 31 journals, led by Science with 15 and the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) with 13. The majority (84%) of the 100 most-cited articles had ≥ 3 authors. The articles originated from 14 countries, led by the USA (n = 44) and England (n = 17). Among the 100 most-cited articles, 24 were clinical studies, 54 were laboratory studies, 20 were reviews, and 2 were clinical guidelines. None of these articles originated from South America, Oceania, or Africa.
Conclusions: The present study provides historical perspectives on the progress of PD research and highlights trends and academic achievements in this field.
Keywords: Most-cited; Neurodegenerative diseases; Parkinson’s disease.