METHODOLOGY: The Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science 'All Databases', Elsevier's Scopus, Google Scholar and PubMed Central were searched to retrieve the 50 most-cited articles in the IEJ published from April 1967 to December 2018. The articles were analysed and information including number of citations, year of publication, contributing authors, institutions and countries, study design, study topic, impact factor and keywords was extracted.

RESULTS: The number of citations of the 50 selected papers varied from 575 to 130 (Web of Science), 656 to164 (Elsevier's Scopus), 1354 to 199 (Google Scholar) and 123 to 3 (PubMed). The majority of papers were published in the year 2001 (n = 7). Amongst 102 authors, the greatest contribution was made by four contributors that included Gulabivala K (n = 4), Ng YL (n = 4), Pitt Ford TR (n = 4) and Wesselink PR (n = 4). The majority of papers originated from the United Kingdom (n = 8) with most contributions from King's College London Dental Institute (UK) and Eastman Dental Hospital, London. Reviews were the most common study design (n = 19) followed by Clinical Research (n = 16) and Basic Research (n = 15). The majority of topics covered by the most-cited articles were Outcome Studies (n = 9), Intracanal medicaments (n = 8), Endodontic microbiology (n = 7) and Canal instrumentation (n = 7). Amongst 76 unique keywords, Endodontics (n = 7), Mineral Trioxide Aggregate (MTA) (n = 7) and Root Canal Treatment (n = 7) were the most frequently used.