An analysis published by Nature reveals the 25 highest-cited papers published over the past twenty five years and explores why they are breaking records:

The first quarter of the twenty-first century has produced some huge scientific breakthroughs, ranging from the first mRNA vaccines and CRISPR-based gene-editing techniques to the discovery of the Higgs boson and the first measurements of gravitational waves. But you won’t find any of these advances described in the top-cited papers published since 2000.

That is one of the findings of an analysis by Nature’s news team of the 25 most-cited papers published in the twenty-first century. The articles garnering the most citations report developments in artificial intelligence (AI); approaches to improve the quality of research or systematic reviews; cancer statistics; and research software. However, a pioneering 2004 paper on experiments with graphene1 — work that won its authors the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 — is also among the twenty-first century’s most-cited.

Here you can download the full list with the 25 most-cited papers of the twenty-first century.

And here you can put them in context. 16 papers from the twenty-first century now make it into the all-time top 50, and 4 of them among the all-time 10.

Are they the most influencial published science?

Only time will tell us. Citations are one measure of a paper’s influence. However the most highly cited papers generally aren’t necessarily the most famous scientific discoveries. In fact, as it usually happens:

Scientists say they value methods, theory and empirical discoveries, but in practice the methods get cited more,

Citation culture is capricious… i.e. scientific culture.