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These are the most-cited research papers of all time

Some studies have received hundreds of thousands of citations, Nature’s updated analysis shows.
By
  1. Richard Van Noorden
Illustration showing three golden trophies on top of stacks of papers, with the top papers floating away behind them.

Illustration: Chiara Vercesi

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.

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Nature 640, 591 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-01124-w

Updates & Corrections

  • Clarification 22 April 2025: The description given for Clarivate did not reflect the global nature of the firm.

References

  1. Lowry, O. H., Rosebrough, N. J., Farr, A. L. & Randall, R. J. J. Biol. Chem. 193, 265–275 (1951).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  2. He, K., Zhang, X., Ren, S. & Sun, J. IEEE Conf. Comput. Vis. Pattern Recognit. 2016, 770–778 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

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Supplementary Information

  1. Methodology and data for the 100 most-cited papers of all time

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