Widelycited

Widelycited is a term used in bibliometrics and scholarly communication to describe publications that have attracted a large number of citations across a broad range of journals and disciplines. In practice, a work is described as widely cited when its influence extends beyond a single subfield and it appears in a variety of citation contexts.

The term is descriptive rather than a formal rating. It can also refer to datasets, dashboards, or tools that aggregate citation data from multiple sources to identify widely cited works. Some discussions use the phrase to distinguish influential papers from those with narrow or emerging audiences, and it may be used in both academic writing and media coverage.

Measurement and interpretation typically rely on citation-based indicators. Common approaches include total citation counts, field-normalized metrics, and percentile rankings (for example, top 1% or top 5%). Data sources such as Web of Science, Scopus, Dimensions, Google Scholar, and others contribute to a work’s widely cited status, though results can vary by source due to coverage differences and indexing practices.

Limitations accompany the notion of widely cited as a label. Citations reflect scholarly attention rather than quality or validity and can be affected by field size, publication year, self-citation, and database coverage. A work may be widely cited for controversial or methodological reasons, while other impactful contributions may be under-cited in some disciplines. Therefore, widely cited should be understood as one dimension of influence within a broader evaluative framework.

See also: bibliometrics, citation analysis, impact factor, h-index, highly cited papers, altmetrics.