Performance of highly cited multiple sclerosis publications in the Science Citation Index expanded: A scientometric analysis.

Background: The present study aims to identify and analyze the characteristics of highly cited publications on Multiple sclerosis in the Science Citation Index Expanded.

Methods: Documents that had 100 citations or more were considered as the highly cited documents. Highly cited publications were analyzed in the distribution of document types, languages, publication years, Web of Science categories, and journals as well as publication performance of countries, institutions, and authors. The six and five publication indicators were applied to compare publications of the countries and the institutes respectively. Highly cited authors were analyzed by Y-index.

Results: In general, articles spent about 12 years to be highly cited articles. The USA dominated the production by the six publication indicators. Harvard University was the most active in research on multiple sclerosis while the University of California, Los Angeles in the USA shows the most independent research. M. Filippi was recognized as the most productive author who had the most articles as the corresponding author.

Conclusion: The findings may be of interest to multiple sclerosis researchers and policymakers all around the world.