These lists, it should be emphasized, solely reflect papers published in Thomson-indexed journals of clinical medicine (including pertinent clinical-medicine papers published in Science, Nature, and other multidisciplinary journals). Some of the names on the main list—e.g., Bert Vogelstein, Kenneth W. Kinzler, John C. Reed—have also compiled substantial citation records based on papers published in journals of molecular biology & genetics, biochemistry, etc. The present survey, however, strictly demonstrates the extent to which these authors and the others have influenced the literature of clinical medicine.

Also, despite the assigning of top-cited authors to one subfield only, there is a degree of overlap between the four specialty rankings, particularly the lists for oncology and for "general" research. John C. Reed and Patrick O. Brown, for example, have both contributed highly cited papers to oncology research, but have also published clin-med papers on broader topics in biomedicine—Reed on apoptosis, or programmed cell death, and Brown on DNA microarrays. Similarly, Jerry W. Shay has published extensively on cancer but has also investigated telomeres and other aspects of cell biology.

The final table ranks clinical-medicine subfields according to average citations per paper (based on a slightly different time window from the other tables, with a blended average for papers published and cited between 2000 and 2004). With an average of more than 8 citations per paper, oncology is tops here, followed closely by cardiovascular and hematological research.