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The Most Highly Cited Scientific Papers of All Time
bmahersciwriter writes Citation is the common way that scientists nod to the important and foundational work that preceded their own and the number of times a particular paper is cited is often used as a rough measure of its impact. So what are the most highly cited papers in the past century plus of scientific research? Is it the determination of DNA's structure? The identification of rapid expansion in the Universe? No. The top 100 most cited papers are actually a motley crew of methods, data resources and software tools that through usability, practicality and a little bit of luck have propelled them to the top of an enormous corpus of scientific literature.
This is what Newton meant when he talked about standing on the shoulders of giants. These methods, algorithms, computer programmes, techniques etc. enable all the research you hear of. The structure of DNA would never have been solved without all the preceding work on x-ray crystallography, for instance. This is truly a case of credit where credit's due and not something surprising...