Which older publications are still highly cited in the field of bibliometrics? Contemporary bibliometric citation classics

We find out which older publications (defined here as published before 1991) are nowadays, i.e. during the period [2013–2022], the most cited in leading bibliometric journals. It is found that Small’s article on co-citation analysis is the most-cited one in these journals, followed by Garfield’s “Citation Analysis as a Tool in Journal Evaluation” and Merton’s article on the Matthew Effect. As expected, also Price figures prominently among colleagues with older, highly-cited publications. Moreover, we performed the same exercise for citations received during the period [2003–2012] and compared the corresponding top twenty lists as a study in the obsolescence of a group of older publications.