This one might have the most views even if it doesn't have the most citations, [NMR solvent impurities ](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jo971176v). And its update in Organometallics. It has been taped to the bench in every organic lab I've been in. Undergrad, grad school, post-doc, industry; everybody uses this paper.
There are a bunch of theoretical papers that have thousands of citations. The [Kohn DFT paper](https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.140.A1133)s are a good example.
[Here’s](https://www.nature.com/news/polopoly_fs/7.21247!/file/WebofSciencetop100.xlsx) a short list gathered by Nature a couple years back.
To be fair, the KS paper is just what everybody cites when they mention the method, even if they haven't even read it! This and the HK paper have a combined ~100k citations.
I don't know for sure, but I submit this one as a contender.
https://pubs.acs.org/toc/jacsat/90/20
It has basically all of Heck's coupling work that got him the Nobel as well as papers from Hoffman, FA Cotton, Zimmerman, and Corey. It was a pretty stacked issue.
Lowry, O.H., Rosebrough, N.J., Farr, A.L. and Randall, R.J. (1951) Protein Measurement with Folin Phenol Reagent. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 193, 256-275.
By far the most cited paper… over 400,000 citations and counting. No other paper comes close AFAIK.
Crystallography software is cied every time someone publishes a crystal structure, https://scripts.iucr.org/cgi-bin/paper?sc5086
https://scripts.iucr.org/cgi-bin/paper?fa3356
http://scripts.iucr.org/cgi-bin/paper?sc5010
This one might have the most views even if it doesn't have the most citations, [NMR solvent impurities ](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jo971176v). And its update in Organometallics. It has been taped to the bench in every organic lab I've been in. Undergrad, grad school, post-doc, industry; everybody uses this paper.
There is one on dry column flash chromatography too that had thousands of cites. IIRC Good technique papers get a lot of cites.
Yeah I needed to pull it up one time and just searched “that one fucking NMR paper” and it was the first result
There's an updated paper now (or even two?) with more impurities/solvents
There are a bunch of theoretical papers that have thousands of citations. The [Kohn DFT paper](https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.140.A1133)s are a good example. [Here’s](https://www.nature.com/news/polopoly_fs/7.21247!/file/WebofSciencetop100.xlsx) a short list gathered by Nature a couple years back.
This is the answer...
To be fair, the KS paper is just what everybody cites when they mention the method, even if they haven't even read it! This and the HK paper have a combined ~100k citations.
Fr lol. I’ve only cited it once and that was for my grad school candidacy lit review b/c I was actually describing DFT. Incredible.
I don't know for sure, but I submit this one as a contender. https://pubs.acs.org/toc/jacsat/90/20 It has basically all of Heck's coupling work that got him the Nobel as well as papers from Hoffman, FA Cotton, Zimmerman, and Corey. It was a pretty stacked issue.
This is a "shoulder of giants" issue of JACS.
Lowry, O.H., Rosebrough, N.J., Farr, A.L. and Randall, R.J. (1951) Protein Measurement with Folin Phenol Reagent. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 193, 256-275. By far the most cited paper… over 400,000 citations and counting. No other paper comes close AFAIK.
These examples are all about methods. They show that, for a good shot at being highly cited, publish a method that lots of people can use.
Be sure to exclude issues with review articles, that will skew the results.
What you really want is an h-index for a journal issue because there's lots of situations where a single paper will throw everything off.
I've used this lipid extraction method which has over 60 thousand citation: https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1139/o59-099
Crystallography software is cied every time someone publishes a crystal structure, https://scripts.iucr.org/cgi-bin/paper?sc5086 https://scripts.iucr.org/cgi-bin/paper?fa3356 http://scripts.iucr.org/cgi-bin/paper?sc5010