Study design: Bibliometric study of current literature.
Objective: To identify and analyze the 100 most cited publications in cervical spine research.
Summary of background data: The cervical spine is a dynamic field of research with many advances made within the last century. The literature has, however, never been comprehensively analyzed to identify and compare the most influential articles as measured by the number of citations.
Methods: All databases of the Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge were utilized in a two-step approach. First, the 150 most cited cervical spine studies up to and including 2014 were identified using four keywords. Second, all keywords related to the cervical spine found in the 150 studies (n = 38) were used to conduct a second search of the database. The top 100 most cited articles were hereby selected for further analysis of current and past citations, authorship, geographic origin, article type, and level of evidence.
Results: Total citations for the 100 studies identified ranged from 173 to 879. They were published in the time frame 1952 to 2008 in a total of 30 different journals. Most studies (n = 42) were published in the decade 1991-2000. Level of evidence ranged from 1 to 5 with 39 studies in the level 4 category. A total of 13 researchers were first author more than once and nine researchers senior author more than once. The two-step approach with a secondary widening of search terms yielded an additional 27 studies, including the first ranking article.
Conclusion: This bibliometric study is likely to include some of the most important milestones in the field of cervical spine research of the last 100 years.