Bibliometric Characteristics of the 1000 Most-Cited English-Language Publications per Decade in Anesthesiology, Surgery, and Medicine, 1980–2019: A Comparative Analysis

Background: Bibliometric comparisons can describe highly cited literature but do not represent the full output of a discipline. The NIH-supported Relative Citation Ratio (RCR) field- and time-normalizes citation rates, while the Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) summarizes online attention. This study compared article-level metrics and bibliometric features among the 1000 most-cited English-language publications per decade in the Web of Science (WoS) categories Anesthesia, Surgery, and Medicine during 1980–2019. Methods: The 1000 most-cited English-language records per decade in the WoS categories Anesthesia, Surgery, and Medicine were retrieved for four decades, 1980–2019, in September 2024. Mean RCRs were obtained from iCite. AAS values were obtained through Dimensions AI and treated as cross-sectional scores measured at the extraction date because historical attention-source coverage was not equivalent. Bibliometric features were summarized for this selected sample. Data linkage and analytic denominators: The 12 category-by-decade datasets each began with 1000 selected records, for 12,000 selections in total. The supplied analysis materials did not include a record-level flow table showing successful linkage to PMID/iCite, DOI/AAS, affiliations, or keyword fields for each field and decade. These counts were not imputed or reconstructed and are reported as a limitation. Results: Within this selected sample, MED had higher RCR values across the study period, whereas ANE and SUR did not show the same increase in RCR from their 1980s values. AAS values were summarized descriptively and were not interpreted as equivalent longitudinal growth because historical coverage and post-publication observation time differed. Funding rankings differed by measure: ANE had the highest NIH-funded proportion in 2010–2019, whereas MED had the highest non-NIH funding proportion. Semantic concentration measures varied by field and metric. Conclusions: Within this selected sample, ANE and SUR did not show the same increase in RCR observed for MED. Semantic measures showed field- and metric-specific changes. These descriptive findings do not establish that topic diversity, collaboration, or journal concentration caused differences in influence, and they should not be generalized to all anesthesiology, surgery, or medicine publications.