METHODS: An electronic search was conducted on the Clarivate Analytics Web of Science "All Databases" to identify and analyze the top 50 most frequently cited scientific articles. After ranking the articles in a descending order based on their citation counts, each article was then crossmatched with the citation counts in Scopus, Google Scholar, and PubMed.
RESULTS: The citation counts of the 50 selected most cited articles ranged between 218 and 731 (Clarivate Analytics Web of Science). The years in which most top 50 articles were published were 2004 and 2008 (n = 5). Among 131 authors, the greatest contribution was made by M. Torabinejad (n = 14). Most of the articles originated from the United States (n = 38) with the greatest contributions from the School of Dentistry, Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, CA (n = 15). Basic research-technology was the most frequent study design (n = 18). A negative, significant correlation occurred between citation density and publication age (correlation coefficient = -0.708, P < .01).
CONCLUSIONS: Several interesting differences were found between the main characteristics of the most cited articles and the most downloaded articles.