{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pone.0000005","title":"Concentration of the Most-Cited Papers in the Scientific Literature: Analysis of Journal Ecosystems","abstract":"<h4>Background</h4>A minority of scientific journals publishes the majority of scientific papers and receives the majority of citations. The extent of concentration of the most influential articles is less well known.<h4>Methods/principal findings</h4>The 100 most-cited papers in the last decade in each of 21 scientific fields were analyzed; fields were considered as ecosystems and their \"species\" (journal) diversity was evaluated. Only 9% of journals in Journal Citation Reports had published at least one such paper. Among this 9%, half of them had published only one such paper. The number of journals that had published a larger number of most-cited papers decreased exponentially according to a Lotka law. Except for three scientific fields, six journals accounted for 53 to 94 of the 100 most-cited papers in their field. With increasing average number of citations per paper (citation density) in a scientific field, concentration of the most-cited papers in a few journals became even more prominent (p<0.001). Concentration was unrelated to the number of papers published or number of journals available in a scientific field. Multidisciplinary journals accounted for 24% of all most-cited papers, with large variability across fields. The concentration of most-cited papers in multidisciplinary journals was most prominent in fields with high citation density (correlation coefficient 0.70, p<0.001). Multidisciplinary journals had published fewer than eight of the 100 most-cited papers in eight scientific fields (none in two fields). Journals concentrating most-cited original articles often differed from those concentrating most-cited reviews. The concentration of the most-influential papers was stronger than the already prominent concentration of papers published and citations received.<h4>Conclusions</h4>Despite a plethora of available journals, the most influential papers are extremely concentrated in few journals, especially in fields with high citation density. Existing multidisciplinary journals publish selectively most-cited papers from fields with high citation density.","journal":"PLoS ONE","year":2006,"id":9989,"datarank":6.993160018042772,"base_score":4.804021044733257,"endowment":4.804021044733257,"self_citation_contribution":0.7206031567099886,"citation_network_contribution":6.272556861332784,"self_endowment_contribution":0.7206031567099886,"citer_contribution":6.272556861332784,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":121,"citer_count":110,"citers_with_citation_signal":96,"citers_with_endowment":96,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.1476,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2006-12-20","algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":148,"name":"John P. A. Ioannidis","orcid":"0000-0003-3118-6859","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":25,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}