We are pleased to present the first edition of the annual list of “topcited” papers in INSPIRE. It is more than a single list. We provide, for each year, both a list of the topcited papers of the year and an all-time topcited list showing the classic papers of our field.
In order to provide meaningful coverage of each subfield of interest to the INSPIRE community, each arXiv category has its own section. To take hep-ph as an example, one list shows the hep-ph papers which received the most citations that year, with citations coming from all papers in the database (e.g., eprints, journal articles, conference proceedings, theses) and the other shows the papers most often cited by hep-ph papers that year; this approach allows one to see the subfield’s impact on the entire HEP field as well as the trending topics within that subfield. We do this for all hep* archives as well as the astro-ph, gr-qc, math (encompassing math-ph and math.*) and nucl* archives. It is important to note, however, that in tracking citations, we focus on our “core” collection, defined as all eprints from the hep*, gr-qc, nucl*, astro-ph.(CO and HE) and physics.acc-ph archives and papers in these subfields from other sources; citations for papers in other subfields are less likely to be comprehensive. Usual caveats regarding references and citations apply.