  A comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the scientific production of
Chemical Engineering area has been carried out using the Web of Science
database for the period 2000-2011 through three complementary studies. Part 2
demonstrated a displacement of the most cited publications to the Far East,
especially due to China, however, this displacement is less important to that
observed for total scientific production (Part 1). United States is still the
country with the highest number of articles among the 1,000 most cited (31.5%),
largely above what expected from their number of publications, followed by
Germany (8.4%) and China (7.5%). The international collaboration, at least
globally, seems not being an important issue for producing highly cited papers.
In fact, only two from the top 25 most cited papers were international
collaborations (8%). Furthermore, a large share of reviews among the 1,000 most
cited papers (65%) has been observed. Although the number of institutions with
more publications among the most cited in the area are from United States, the
two institutions with the highest cited papers are CNRS (France) and CSIC
(Spain). The most cited papers are highly concentrated in a few journals:
around half of the most cited papers were published in five journals.
Generally, the most cited papers are published in journals with high impact
factors, however, there is also a significant number of highly cited papers
published in journals with low or not having impact factor.
