What is the most highly cited paper in the scientific literature? Chances are slim that most researchers know the answer. It turns out to be a 1951 publication in the Journal of Biological Chemistry describing an assay to determine the amount of protein in a solution1. That has been cited more than 350,000 times in the Web of Science (WoS), a database that includes 98 million papers dating back to 1900.
Updates & Corrections
-
Clarification 22 April 2025: The description given for Clarivate did not reflect the global nature of the firm.
References
Lowry, O. H., Rosebrough, N. J., Farr, A. L. & Randall, R. J. J. Biol. Chem. 193, 265–275 (1951).
He, K., Zhang, X., Ren, S. & Sun, J. IEEE Conf. Comput. Vis. Pattern Recognit. 2016, 770–778 (2016).