This qualitative study identifies all ophthalmic journals and evaluates citation metrics relating to articles, journals, authors, institutions, and countries published therein.
Key Points
Question
What articles, journals, authors, institutions, and countries in the ophthalmic literature are the most highly cited and prolific and have the highest h-index for ophthalmic journal articles?
Findings
In this qualitative study, the h-index for ophthalmic journal articles was determined to be 494, which appeared comparable with the journal literature of other medical disciplines.
Meaning
While these analyses excluded ophthalmology articles in general medical journals, they suggest a strong ophthalmic research base underpins eye care, with ophthalmology having the highest h-index across a range of ophthalmic and vision disciplines contributing to this literature.
Abstract
Importance
The primary vehicle for reporting and testing advances in eye care is refereed ophthalmic journals, which can be characterized using targeted bibliometric analyses.
Objective
To identify all ophthalmic journals and evaluate citation metrics relating to articles, journals, authors, institutions, and countries published therein.
Design and Setting
A bibliometric analysis was undertaken of all ophthalmic journals included in the Scopus database (Elsevier). The search was restricted to all article types published in ophthalmic journals in English from inception through November 18, 2022. After excluding general medical journals, journals published in a language other than English, and spurious titles unrelated to the ophthalmic field, the Scopus database was found to list 335 ophthalmic journal titles that have published 471 184 articles, constituting the data set for this analysis. The 20 most highly cited articles were identified. Rank-order lists by article count were assembled for journals, authors, institutions, and countries.
Main Outcomes and Measures
An h-index for ophthalmic journal articles was derived from citations and article counts for each constituent of each category.
Results
The h-index for ophthalmic journal articles was determined to be 494. The journal with the highest h-index was Ophthalmology (h-index, 297). The journal with the greatest number of articles was American Journal of Ophthalmology (38 441 articles). The most highly cited article was by Quigley and Broman, 2006 (5147 citations), concerning the epidemiology of glaucoma. The author with the highest h-index for ophthalmic journal articles was Ronald Klein, MD (h-index, 126), and the most prolific was Carol L. Shields, MD (1400 articles). Johns Hopkins University (h-index, 215) was the institution with the highest h-index for ophthalmic journal articles, and Harvard University was the most prolific (10 071 articles). The United States was the nation with the highest h-index for ophthalmic journal articles (h-index, 444) and was the most prolific (180 017 articles).
Conclusions and Relevance
In this study, the most highly cited articles published in ophthalmic journals were revealed, as well as the leading journals, authors, institutions, and countries. While excluding ophthalmology articles in general medical journals, this investigation affords a means of identifying highly cited authors, institutions, and countries which individuals or institutions can use as a guide regarding contributions to the field.
Introduction
The primary vehicle for reporting and testing advances in eye care is refereed ophthalmic journals, which span a variety of disciplines such as ophthalmology, optometry, orthoptics, and vision science. One way of identifying the most prominent aspects of articles published in ophthalmic journals is to undertake a comprehensive analysis of the entirety of this literature. To our knowledge and following a thorough search of the medical literature, such a global analysis has not been conducted or reported previously.
A plethora of targeted bibliometric analyses of the ophthalmic literature has been published over the past 2 decades, facilitated by the availability of large databases of scientific literature,1 powerful search engines,2 and sophisticated bibliometric analysis software.3 Bibliometric analyses of the ophthalmic literature include investigations of specific eye care subdisciplines, such as keratoconus,4 glaucoma,5 dry eye,6 contact lenses,7 and refractive error8; citation metrics of individual journals9 and authors10; bibliometric analysis of specific countries11; and the association of COVID-19 with publication metrics.12
The aim of this article is to use bibliometric search tools to identify all ophthalmic journals, determine the overall citation metrics these journals, and determine the most highly cited articles, as well as journals, authors, institutions, and countries with the highest h-indices. This work is important to (1) facilitate quantification of the overall contribution of ophthalmic journals to the advancement of vision science and eye care; (2) serve as a guide to clinicians, scientists, and other stakeholders as to the leading entities in ophthalmic research publications; and (3) reveal characteristics and trends in ophthalmic publishing.
Methods
Search Protocol
The search protocol used here was undertaken using the Scopus database (Elsevier) because, with 389 million records, this is currently the most comprehensive database of academic articles.13 The search was restricted to all article types published in ophthalmic journals in English from inception through November 18, 2022. Specifically, ophthalmic articles in the general medical, but not ophthalmic-specific, literature were excluded. Ophthalmic journals were defined as those with ophthalmology, optometry, orthoptics, vision, contact lenses, eye, or ophthalmic disease in the title and/or journals that are principally organized by an ophthalmic profession or organization. An initial search on this basis revealed 365 journals titles; however, some were clearly not ophthalmic in nature (eg, Economic Eye, which is an economics journal). Nonophthalmic journal titles found in the initial search were identified by inspecting all 365 journal titles and then devising appropriate exclusion terms. This final search equation, which is presented in eAppendix 1 in Supplement 1, revealed there to be 335 ophthalmic journal titles in the Scopus database.
Calculating a Subject-Specific h-Index for Ophthalmic Journal Articles
A subject-specific h-index14 for ophthalmic journal articles was derived to serve as a combined measure of the number of citations and publications among journals, authors, institutions, and countries. This technique has been used extensively by the current authors.6,7,8 In brief, the h-index for ophthalmic journal articles of, say a given author, was determined by sorting all ophthalmic journal articles published by that author according to rank order of citations (from highest to lowest) and working down the list to determine the first article with an article rank number that was greater than its citation count. The h-index for ophthalmic journal articles was the number of the entry above the identified article. This was repeated for the 50 most prolific authors; the 20 leading authors were identified and ranked by h-index. The same approach was also adopted for ophthalmic journals, institutions, and countries. This study used Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR) reporting guideline, adapted for bibliometric analysis.
Results
A total of 471 184 articles published in the 335 ophthalmic journal titles appear on the Scopus database. The combined h-index for ophthalmic journal articles of this body of work is 494. In a number of instances, journal titles have changed (often more than once) through their history and/or journals have been merged. For the purposes of this analysis, only current journal titles are used, and the bibliometrics relating to previous titles or merged entities are combined.
The time course of publication of these articles from 1920 to 2022 is shown in the Figure. It can be seen that 1996 and 1997 are anomalous, with about 5000 (1996) and 3000 (1997) more articles than the immediately preceding or subsequent years. This is because in those 2 years (but no other years), all abstracts from the Annual Meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, published in the journal Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science, were coded as articles and included in the Scopus database. Since these abstracts are technically part of 1996 and 1997 volumes of that journal and are citable, they have been retained in the search output. However, these abstracts have seldom been cited, so including these abstracts was judged by the authors to not confound the citation-based analysis presented here.
Figure. Number of Articles Published in Ophthalmic Journals Each Year Between 1920 and 2022.
Journals
The 20 ophthalmic journals with the highest h-index for ophthalmic journal articles are listed in Table 1 in rank order; the h-indices for ophthalmic journal articles range from 104 to 297. The ophthalmic journal with the highest h-index for ophthalmic journal articles is Ophthalmology (h-index, 297).
Table 1. Journals From Where Articles in the Ophthalmic Literature Were Published, Ranked by h-Index for Ophthalmic Journal Articles .
| Rank | Journal | h-Index for ophthalmic journal articles | No. of articles | 2021 Journal impact factor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ophthalmology | 297 | 18 226 | 14.277 |
| 2 | JAMA Ophthalmology a | 270 | 25 058 | 8.253 |
| 3 | Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science | 258 | 34 320b | 4.925 |
| 4 | American Journal of Ophthalmology c | 234 | 38 441 | 5.488 |
| 5 | Vision Research | 230 | 13 153 | 1.984 |
| 6 | British Journal of Ophthalmology | 185 | 18 863 | 5.907 |
| 7 | Progress in Retinal and Eye Research | 175 | 962 | 19.704 |
| 8 | Survey of Ophthalmology | 172 | 3868 | 6.197 |
| 9 | Experimental Eye Research | 161 | 10 994 | 3.770 |
| 10 | Journal of Cataract and Refractive Surgery | 158 | 14 044 | 3.528 |
| 11 | Retina | 138 | 8066 | 3.975 |
| 12 | Perception | 138 | 5024 | 1.695 |
| 13 | Cornea | 134 | 8264 | 3.153 |
| 14 | Journal of Vision | 127 | 6928 | 2.004 |
| 15 | Optometry and Vision Science | 118 | 12 634 | 2.106 |
| 16 | Graefe’s Archive for Clinical and Experimental Ophthalmology | 118 | 8772 | 3.535 |
| 17 | Acta Ophthalmologica d | 109 | 14 022 | 3.988 |
| 18 | Visual Neuroscience | 109 | 2380 | 1.895 |
| 19 | Current Eye Research | 104 | 6502 | 2.555 |
| 20 | Eye | 104 | 4963 | 4.456 |
Includes Archives of Ophthalmology.
Includes about 8000 abstracts.
Includes American Journal of Ophthalmology case reports.
Includes Acta Ophthalmologica Scandinavia supplements.
The journal in Table 1 with the greatest number of articles is the American Journal of Ophthalmology (38 441 articles). Although Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science ranks second, the article count of 34 320 includes about 8000 abstracts included by the Scopus database in 1996 and 1997, as explained above, which means that the true number of articles in that journal would be closer to 26 000. The journals listed in Table 1 can be broadly categorized as follows: general ophthalmology (n = 9), vision science (n = 7), ophthalmology subspecialty (n = 3), and optometry (n = 1).
Articles
The 20 most highly cited articles are listed in eTable 1 in Supplement 1. These articles have been cited between 2066 and 5147 times. The article with the highest citation count (5147 citations), by Quigley and Broman15 predicted in 2006 the number of people worldwide who would have glaucoma in the year 2020.
The 20 most highly cited articles were published in JAMA Ophthalmology (n = 9), Ophthalmology (n = 3), American Journal of Ophthalmology (n = 2), British Journal of Ophthalmology (n = 2), Vision Research (n = 2), Ocular Surface (n = 1), and Survey of Ophthalmology (n = 1). The subject matter of these 20 articles can be broadly categorized as glaucoma and intraocular pressure (n = 6), retinopathy and maculopathy (n = 6), visual impairment (n = 2), and 1 article each on cataract, dry eye, keratoconus, neural processing, uveitis, and visual attention.
Authors
The 20 authors with the highest h-indices for ophthalmic journal articles are listed in Table 2; these range from 79 to 126. The author with the highest h-index for ophthalmic journal articles was Ronald Klein, MD (n = 126),16 a US ophthalmologist whose research was focused primarily on the epidemiology of eye disease and the burden of visual impairment and blindness due to diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration. US ophthalmologist Barbara E. K. Klein, MD (married to Ronald Klein, MD), was ranked second (h-index, 112) followed by Australian ophthalmologist Paul Mitchell, MBBS, PhD (h-index, 110).
Table 2. Authors Publishing in the Ophthalmic Literature Ranked by h-Index for Ophthalmic Journal Articles .
| Rank | Author | h-Index | No. of articles in the ophthalmic literature/total articles (%) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| For ophthalmic journal articles | Overall | |||
| 1 | Ronald Klein, MD | 126 | 177 | 553/1156 (48) |
| 2 | Barbara E. K. Klein, MD | 112 | 155 | 390/888 (44) |
| 3 | Paul Mitchell, MBBS, PhD | 110 | 138 | 607/1138 (53) |
| 4 | Tienyin Wong, MBBS, PhD | 107 | 156 | 789/1759 (45) |
| 5 | Robert N. Weinreb, MD | 105 | 111 | 940/1251 (75) |
| 6 | Jerry A. Shields, MD | 103 | 106 | 1285/1428 (90) |
| 7 | Harry A. Quigley, MD | 102 | 112 | 424/523 (81) |
| 8 | Carol L. Shields, MD | 98 | 101 | 1400/1582 (88) |
| 9 | Jost B. Jonas, MD | 95 | 127 | 873/1252 (70) |
| 10 | Richard F. Spaide, MD | 92 | 92 | 392/452 (87) |
| 11 | Kazuo Tsubota, MD, PhD | 89 | 99 | 806/1364 (59) |
| 12 | Neil M. Bressler, MD | 88 | 91 | 361/441 (82) |
| 13 | Charles Foster, MD | 85 | 91 | 660/827 (80) |
| 14 | William R. Green, MD | 84 | 88 | 612/678 (90) |
| 15 | Jiehin Jie Wang, PhD | 82 | 113 | 375/680 (55) |
| 16 | Robert Ritch, MD | 81 | 87 | 715/814 (88) |
| 17 | Shigeru Kinoshita, MD, PhD | 81 | 89 | 553/992 (56) |
| 18 | Alan Bird, MD | 80 | 95 | 374/559 (67) |
| 19 | Seang Mei Saw, MBBS, PhD | 80 | 94 | 304/601 (51) |
| 20 | Lawrence A. Yannuzzi, MD | 79 | 84 | 412/495 (83) |
Total article counts of the 20 authors listed in Table 2 ranged from 304 to 1400. The most prolific authors were another married couple, ophthalmologists Carol L. Shields, MD (1400 articles), and Jerry A. Shields, MD (1285 articles). The authors listed in Table 2 who have published the highest percentage of their total article output in ophthalmic journals were Jerry A. Shields, MD, and William R. Green, MD (both 90%).
Four authors (20%) included in Table 2 were female; these were ophthalmologists Barbara E. K. Klein, MD (ranked second), Carol L. Shields, MD (ranked eighth), and Seang-Mei Saw, MBBS, PhD (ranked nineteenth), and epidemiologist Jiehin Jie Wang, PhD (ranked fifteenth).
Institutions
The 20 institutions with the highest h-indices for ophthalmic journal articles from where articles in ophthalmic journals were published are listed in Table 3. The h-indices for ophthalmic journal articles of these institutions ranged from 122 to 215. The leading institution was Johns Hopkins University (h-index, 215), followed by Harvard University (h-index, 206) and then Moorfields Eye Hospital (h-index, 185).
Table 3. Institutions From Where Articles in the Ophthalmic Literature Were Published, Ranked by Institution h-Index for Ophthalmic Journal Articles .
| Rank | Institution | Country | h-Index for ophthalmic journal articles | No. of articles |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Johns Hopkins Universitya | United States | 215 | 7838 |
| 2 | Harvard Universityb | United States | 206 | 10 071 |
| 3 | Moorfields Eye Hospitalc | United Kingdom | 185 | 9836 |
| 4 | University of Miamid | United States | 183 | 6002 |
| 5 | University of Wisconsine | United States | 164 | 2522 |
| 6 | National Institutes of Healthf | United States | 155 | 3774 |
| 7 | Thomas Jefferson Universityg | United States | 154 | 5827 |
| 8 | University of Southern Californiah | United States | 149 | 4505 |
| 9 | University of California, Los Angelesi | United States | 148 | 5267 |
| 10 | National University of Singaporej | Singapore | 143 | 3301 |
| 11 | University of Sydney | Australia | 140 | 2837 |
| 12 | Duke Universityk | United States | 138 | 3235 |
| 13 | University of Melbournel | Australia | 137 | 4593 |
| 14 | University of Iowam | United States | 134 | 3062 |
| 15 | University of Pennsylvanian | United States | 133 | 3028 |
| 16 | Case Western Reserve Universityo | United States | 131 | 3177 |
| 17 | University of California, San Diegop | United States | 127 | 2580 |
| 18 | Oregon Health & Science University | United States | 123 | 2225 |
| 19 | University of California, San Francisco | United States | 122 | 3678 |
| 20 | University of California, Berkeley | United States | 122 | 2672 |
Includes School of Medicine, Wilmer Eye Hospital.
Includes Schepens Eye Research Institute, Mass Eye & Ear.
Includes University College London, Institute of Ophthalmology.
Includes Leonard School of Medicine, Bascom Palmer Eye Institute.
Includes School of Medicine and Public Health.
Includes National Eye Institute.
Includes Wills Eye Hospital.
Includes Doheny Eye Institute, Keck School of Medicine.
Includes David Geffen School of Medicine, Jules Stein Eye Institute.
Includes Singapore National Eye Centre, Singapore Eye Research Institute.
Includes Eye Center, Medical Center.
Includes Royal Victorian Eye & Ear Hospital, Centre for Eye Research Australia.
Includes Hospitals & Clinics.
Includes Perelman School of Medicine, Penn Medicine.
Includes Cleveland Clinic Foundation.
Includes Shiley Eye Institute.
Harvard University has produced the highest number of ophthalmic journal articles (n = 10 071), followed by Moorfields Eye Hospital (n = 9836) and then Johns Hopkins University (n = 7838). The number of institutions from the various countries represented in Table 3 were the United States (n = 16), Australia (n = 2), United Kingdom (n = 1), and Singapore (n = 1).
Countries
The 20 countries with the highest h-indices for ophthalmic journal articles are listed in Table 4. The h-indices for ophthalmic journal articles of the countries listed ranged from 105 to 444, and the article counts ranged from 2963 to 180 017. The United States had the highest h-index for ophthalmic journal articles (n = 444) and number of publications (n = 180 017); these metrics were significantly greater than second-ranked United Kingdom (h-index, 256; 41 085 publications).
Table 4. Countries of Authors Publishing in the Ophthalmic Literature, Ranked by Country h-Index for Ophthalmic Journal Articles .
| Rank | Country | h-Index for ophthalmic journal articles | No. of articles |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | 444 | 180 017 |
| 2 | United Kingdom | 256 | 41 085 |
| 3 | Italy | 254 | 12 129 |
| 4 | Germany | 224 | 20 384 |
| 5 | Australia | 207 | 17 458 |
| 6 | Japan | 196 | 24 104 |
| 7 | Canada | 174 | 15 173 |
| 8 | Netherlands | 163 | 8479 |
| 9 | Switzerland | 158 | 5875 |
| 10 | France | 157 | 7325 |
| 11 | Singapore | 146 | 4248 |
| 12 | Spain | 137 | 8211 |
| 13 | China | 136 | 16 962 |
| 14 | India | 129 | 19 985 |
| 15 | Sweden | 123 | 5063 |
| 16 | Brazil | 118 | 4263 |
| 17 | South Korea | 115 | 8343 |
| 18 | Austria | 115 | 2990 |
| 19 | Israel | 107 | 5914 |
| 20 | Hong Kong | 105 | 2963 |
Discussion
This work analyzed the collective output of all scholarly ophthalmic journals but does not include ophthalmic publications in other journals, such as general medical journals. As such, it facilitates an appraisal of the citation metrics of articles published in these journals as well as laying down a benchmark of academic excellence for the purposes of current comparisons and future reference.
Although this work purposefully reports a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of ophthalmic journals, it should be recognized that it does not assess the entire ophthalmic literature. This is because ophthalmic research is sometimes published in nonophthalmic journals, such as general and specialist medical journals discussing issues with an ophthalmic connection, or even engineering journals discussing, for example, technical aspects of artificial eye retinal implants. To our knowledge, there do not appear to be mechanisms in any current bibliometric databases that would facilitate identification of the entire ophthalmic literature.
The increase in the number of articles published in ophthalmic journals over the past century (Figure) can be characterized as follows: an output of under 550 articles per year from 1920 until 1945; an increase to between 1000 to 1500 articles per year until 1960; and then an exponential increase from 1960 until the present time. Currently, over 18 000 refereed scientific articles per year are published in ophthalmic journals, approximating to almost 50 articles per day.
The combined h-index for ophthalmic journal articles of 494 can be compared with that of 10 arbitrarily selected medical fields by deriving crude estimates of the h-index of journal publications in each field (eTable 2 in Supplement 1). The h-indices of the disciplines represented in eTable 2 in Supplement 1 range from 284 (hematology) to 714 (oncology), which places the ophthalmic journal literature in the middle of this ranking list. To our knowledge, this type of analysis has not been done previously in respect of other specialty medical journals.
It is of interest that although the number of articles published in ophthalmic journals (471 184) is similar to that published in oncology journals (472 081), the h-index for ophthalmic journal articles (494) is considerably less than that of oncology journal articles (730). In fact, journals relating to the medical specialties ranked first to fifth in eTable 2 in Supplement 1 have published fewer journal articles but have higher h-indices than ophthalmic journals. This is not surprising as medical conditions vary in mortality and morbidity, which likely influences the h-index of the body of work.
Journals
Most journals featured in Table 1 are in the fields of general or subspecialty ophthalmology (n = 12), vision science (n = 7), and optometry (n = 1). The ophthalmic journals listed in Table 1 essentially represent an historical ranking that relates to the entire output of these journals since their inception. A popular current measure of the extent to which journals are cited is the impact factor (Clarivate Analytics),17 which indicates the extent to which articles in a given journal have been cited over the previous 2 years. Strict standards are applied by Clarivate Analytics for inclusion of journals that comprise the Journal Citation Reports.17 All of the ophthalmic journals listed in Table 1 have been included in the Journal Citation Reports.
The ophthalmic journal with the highest impact factor is Progress in Retinal and Eye Research (impact factor, 19.704). This journal should be considered the ophthalmic journal with the highest impact factor at the present time; the high impact factor of this journal likely is associated with the fact that it only publishes review articles and has very few articles counted in its denominator, features which are generally known to generate disproportionately higher impact factors than journals publishing scientific articles.18 According to the current analysis, Ophthalmology should be considered the journal with the strongest citation profile of all time, although of note, this high ranking is associated in part with its highly cited Preferred Practice Patterns, which are not, to our knowledge, currently permitted to be submitted to any other journal, and its denominator has been decreased substantially recently with the transfer of articles with lower citations distributed to Ophthalmology Retina, Ophthalmology Glaucoma, and Ophthalmology Science. These latter 3 so-called baby Ophthalmology journals share 1 publisher and many editorial board members and are not necessarily editorially distinct.
Articles
The topic of glaucoma dominates the 20 most cited ophthalmic articles (eTable 1 in Supplement 1). Glaucoma poses a substantial public health concern as it is the second leading cause of blindness after cataract, and this blindness is usually irreversible.19 The most highly cited article in ophthalmic journals, published by Quigley and Broman15 in 2006, predicted that 79.6 million people worldwide would develop glaucoma by 2020; this figure was reported by Allison et al19 in 2020 to be 76 million, largely confirming the earlier prediction of Quigley and Broman.15
The range of total citations for the 20 most highly cited articles is broadly commensurate with those of other disciplines (eTable 2 in Supplement 1), although the most highly cited ophthalmic journal article by Quigley and Broman15 (5147 citations) falls well short of the top-cited articles in journals of other disciplines, such as psychiatry (Beck et al20 with 28 244 citations) and neurology (Hamilton21 with 25 906 citations).
Research on retinopathy and maculopathy are also strongly represented among the 20 most cited articles published in ophthalmic journals. Quality of life has been demonstrated to be severely compromised in people with such diseases,22 making this a topic of major concern for eye care practitioners.
Authors
All of the authors listed in Table 2 are ophthalmologists except for Jiehin Jie Wang, PhD, who is an epidemiologist. That 19 of the 20 authors listed in Table 2 are ophthalmologists supports the notion that ophthalmologists, as anticipated, are the dominant individuals who serve as authors in ophthalmic journals from the perspective of citations and number of publications.
Institutions
Most of the 20 leading institutions from which ophthalmic journal articles have been published (Table 3) are, to our knowledge, well-established universities or hospitals with major ophthalmology entities. Many of these institutions also house optometry and/or orthoptic departments. The only institution listed in Table 3 without an ophthalmology department or eye hospital, but with a School of Optometry, is the University of California, Berkeley, at rank 20.
The predominance of ophthalmology institutions in Table 3 compared with other ophthalmic disciplines such as optometry is consistent with the greater number of ophthalmology journals, long-standing medical foundations, and the broad, highly funded medical research base of ophthalmology, despite there being fewer ophthalmologists (n = 232 866)23 than optometrists (n = 331 781)24 worldwide.
Countries
The number 1 ranking of the United States in Table 4 is consistent with this nation being the leading country for life sciences research.25 The United Kingdom (ranked second), Italy (third), and Germany (fourth) have a long tradition of ophthalmic research and innovation and are clearly the leading European nations in this domain. Australia at rank 5, with its small population and more limited resources, seems to be performing disproportionately well in ophthalmic research. China has made substantial advances in ophthalmic research in recent times11; however, its relatively low ranking of 13 may reflect the fact that Chinese contributions to refereed English-language journals did not emerge until the late 20th century, compared with the Western ophthalmic literature, which has been in existence for over a century.
An approach for tracking future ophthalmic bibliometric trends over time, such as constructing updated ranking lists, is outlined in eAppendix 2 in Supplement 1.
Limitations
This analysis must be interpreted in the context of the protocols adopted by Scopus for capturing and reporting bibliometric data. Other bibliometric databases that could have been used for this work are Google Scholar (Google) and Web of Science (Clarivate). Although citation metrics would not be identical if these other databases were used, Renjith and Pradeepkumar26 have demonstrated a high positive correlation among citations in these 3 bibliometric databases.
The years of publication included in Scopus for most journals do not cover all years of publication. This is due to the criteria adopted by Scopus and indeed all of the various databases for the inclusion of journals, such as the structure of the journal editorial board, regularity, consistency and timeliness of publication, and rigor of the peer review process.27 Scopus only counts citations accrued from articles published from 1970 onwards. Accordingly, the analyses presented here should be considered as favoring the contemporary rather than historic vision research landscape.
Ophthalmic publications in highly cited journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, or JAMA, are not included in this analysis; publications in these journals, especially randomized clinical trial results, are some of the most highly cited ophthalmic articles. Therefore, in interpreting these results, it is important to bear in mind that the present analysis does not cover the entire ophthalmic literature, ie, this analysis relates specifically to articles published in ophthalmic journals.
Conclusions
The refereed literature embodied in ophthalmic journals serves as both a repository of advances in the field and a platform for testing new concepts and treatments. The present work characterizes this literature by way of identifying the most highly cited articles in ophthalmic journals, as well as journals, authors, institutions, and countries with the highest h-indices, citation counts, and number of publications, which ought to be recognized and celebrated by the ophthalmic and vision science community. There is potentially also a practical dimension to these data; given that h-indices and associated rankings are essentially a mark of excellence, prospective graduate students, resident physicians, and fellows may use this information as an objective factor that might influence choice of institutions, clinicians with whom they wish to train, and countries in which they wish to work. Finally, this bibliometric analysis establishes a quantitative benchmark for monitoring current and future ophthalmic publishing, and facilitates comparison with other medical and indeed nonmedical disciplines.
eAppendix 1. Search equation
eAppendix 2. Monitoring future ophthalmic bibliometric trends
eTable 1. Most Highly Cited Articles Published in the Ophthalmic Literature
eTable 2. Crude Bibliometrics of Other Medical Specialty Journals
Data sharing statement
References
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Associated Data
This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.
Supplementary Materials
eAppendix 1. Search equation
eAppendix 2. Monitoring future ophthalmic bibliometric trends
eTable 1. Most Highly Cited Articles Published in the Ophthalmic Literature
eTable 2. Crude Bibliometrics of Other Medical Specialty Journals
Data sharing statement