史上引用最高的100篇论文（一）：Paper Mountain

【知社学术编译】高温超导体的发现、DNA双螺旋结构的解析、宇宙加速膨胀的证据，这些杰出的工作都获得了诺贝尔奖，然而他们都没能进入史上引用最高的100篇论文清单。而碳纳米管的发现，虽然没有获得诺贝尔奖，却在这个清单上排名第36。

文献引用是一个学者注明其思想、方法和发现出处的标准作法，被引用数也经常用于衡量一篇文章的重要性。50年前，Eugene Garfield 发表了科学引用指数（SCI）以跟踪每篇论文的引用情况。为纪念SCI发表的50周年，Nature杂志和Thomson Reuters列举了有史以来引用最高的100篇论文。

这个清单有一些让人意外之处。首先，进入清单，一篇论文至少需要被引用12119次；在学术界这是一个天文数字。更重要的是，许多家喻户晓的著名文章都没有入选，如爱因斯坦的相对论，以及前面所提的经典工作。而进入榜单的，很多是描述实验方法和计算工具的。

例如，史上引用最多，是1951年一篇描述蛋白质测量方法的论文，被引用超过30万次。这让其作者已故生化学家Oliver Lowry非常意外。在1977年，他就曾写道，“我知道这并不是一篇非常重要的论文，但这些引用还是让我暗自开心。”

科学文献浩瀚繁琐，这100篇论文显然是其中的异类。要知道Thomson Reuter的 Web of Science共收录了5800万篇论文。如果所有的论文堆成一座乞力马扎罗山，那这100篇文章只是山顶的1厘米。在这个数据库里，只有14499篇论文被引用数超过了1000，他们也只能堆砌不到两米高。事实上，大约有一半的论文被引用不超过一次，他们才是乞力马扎罗山的庞大基底。

没有人能够完全解释什么因素使得一些论文被广泛引用，而更重要的一些工作却没有得到相应的数字。但这其中还是有迹可循的。许多描述实验方法或者计算工具的论文被当成标准参考文献被后人广泛引用。而一些奠基性的工作，如爱因斯坦的相对论，因其重要性很快进入教科书，甚至被当成常识，因而其论文反倒不再被引用。此外，各个领域之间也有不小差别，比如生物学家就比物理学家更多地引用论文。因此，不同领域、不同时代的论文之间其实很难比较。

今天，我们将引用前100名的论文清单列在最后，供您参考。明天，【知社学术圈】也将深入分析这100篇论文的分布及其影响，敬请关注。

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