Objectives: The use of citation analysis to identify the first 100 papers in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) provides unique insights into advances in disease understanding and subsequent follow-up treatment innovations over time.
Methods: The Thomson Reuters Web of Science database with the search terms "inflammatory bowel disease" or "Crohn disease" or "ulcerative colitis" or "colitis" was used to identify all English language full manuscripts for the study. Title, first and senior authors, institution and department of first author, journal, country of origin, year, and topic of each manuscript were analyzed.
Results: The top 100 manuscripts were published between 1955 and 2013. 224,809 eligible papers were returned and the median (range) citation number was 1028.5 (719-3957). The country and year with the greatest number of publications were the USA (n = 47), and 2007 (n = 11). Gastroenterology published the highest number of papers (n = 18, 21,083 citations) and The New England Journal of Medicine had the most citations (n = 13, 25,035 citations).
Conclusions: This highly cited list of papers identifies the subjects and authors who have had the greatest impact on IBD research in the last decades, which serves as a reference for researchers and clinicians "highly citable" manuscripts.