Most cited in this index
What does the field treat as foundational — and is that different from what we assume? These rankings reflect citation counts within the discipline's own journals, not Google Scholar's cross-disciplinary totals. An article cited 200 times across CCC, College English, and Written Communication tells a different story than one cited 200 times from linguistics or education. This is the field citing itself — the closest approximation we have to what rhetoric and composition actually considers essential reading.
Methodology
Data source
Citation data is derived from reference lists deposited by publishers with CrossRef. Pinakes retrieves the full reference list for each article that has one available, then matches referenced DOIs against DOIs in the article index. When article A’s reference list contains article B’s DOI, that constitutes one internal citation of B by A. Only citations between articles both present in this index are counted.
Counting method
The “Most Cited” count for each article is the number of distinct indexed articles that cite it — a simple count of incoming edges in the citation network. Self-citations are included when they appear in the deposited reference list. Duplicate citations (the same article referencing the same target multiple times) are counted once.
View modes
All: A single ranked list of the most-cited articles across the full index. By Journal: Articles grouped by the journal they were published in, showing the most-cited articles within each venue. By Topic: Articles grouped by their topic tags, showing the most-cited articles for each research area. By Decade: Articles grouped by publication decade, revealing how citation influence is distributed across time periods.
Filters
The journal filter restricts which cited articles are displayed (not which citing articles contribute to the count). The topic filter restricts to articles carrying a particular tag. Year range filters restrict by publication year of the cited article. All filters interact additively.
Limitations
These are internal citation counts only. An article with 5 citations here may have 500 in Google Scholar; its ranking here reflects its influence within the rhetoric and composition journals indexed by Pinakes specifically. Not all journals deposit reference lists with CrossRef — those that do not can be cited but cannot contribute citations, creating an asymmetry in the data. Older articles have had more time to accumulate citations, giving them a structural advantage over recent work. See the coverage panel below for per-journal reference deposit rates.
| Journal | Articles | With references | Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Across the Disciplines | 370 | 370 | 100.0% |
| Advances in the History of Rhetoric | 312 | 312 | 100.0% |
| Argumentation | 1382 | 1382 | 100.0% |
| College Composition and Communication | 6937 | 6937 | 100.0% |
| College English | 10670 | 10670 | 100.0% |
| Communication Design Quarterly | 407 | 407 | 100.0% |
| Communication Design Quarterly Review | 65 | 65 | 100.0% |
| Community Literacy Journal | 465 | 465 | 100.0% |
| Computers and Composition | 1665 | 1665 | 100.0% |
| Double Helix | 112 | 112 | 100.0% |
| IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication | 3229 | 3229 | 100.0% |
| Journal of Academic Writing | 245 | 245 | 100.0% |
| Journal of Business and Technical Communication | 1053 | 1053 | 100.0% |
| Journal of Technical Writing and Communication | 1534 | 1534 | 100.0% |
| Journal of Writing Analytics | 95 | 95 | 100.0% |
| Journal of Writing Research | 295 | 295 | 100.0% |
| Pedagogy | 1141 | 1141 | 100.0% |
| Philosophy & Rhetoric | 691 | 691 | 100.0% |
| Poroi | 259 | 259 | 100.0% |
| Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments | 127 | 127 | 100.0% |
| Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric | 599 | 599 | 100.0% |
| Res Rhetorica | 308 | 308 | 100.0% |
| Research in the Teaching of English | 1678 | 1678 | 100.0% |
| Rhetoric & Public Affairs | 733 | 733 | 100.0% |
| Rhetoric Review | 1392 | 1392 | 100.0% |
| Rhetoric of Health and Medicine | 202 | 202 | 100.0% |
| Rhetorica | 2062 | 2062 | 100.0% |
| Teaching English in the Two-Year College | 1513 | 1513 | 100.0% |
| The WAC Journal | 345 | 345 | 100.0% |
| Writing and Pedagogy | 334 | 334 | 100.0% |
| Assessing Writing | 1015 | 1014 | 99.9% |
| Rhetoric Society Quarterly | 1770 | 1769 | 99.9% |
| Technical Communication Quarterly | 1116 | 1115 | 99.9% |
| Written Communication | 901 | 898 | 99.7% |
| Business and Professional Communication Quarterly | 517 | 515 | 99.6% |
| Writing Center Journal | 907 | 882 | 97.2% |
| Composition Forum | 553 | 505 | 91.3% |
| Literacy in Composition Studies | 191 | 163 | 85.3% |
| Journal | Articles | With references | Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peitho | 418 | 114 | 27.3% |
| Journal | Articles | With references | Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic Writing e-Journal | 108 | 0 | — |
| Composition Studies | 335 | 0 | — |
| Computers and Composition Digital Press | 307 | 0 | — |
| Enculturation | 499 | 0 | — |
| Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics | 55 | 0 | — |
| KB Journal: The Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society | 339 | 0 | — |
| Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy | 914 | 0 | — |
| Praxis: A Writing Center Journal | 228 | 0 | — |
| Pre/Text | 231 | 0 | — |
| Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society | 241 | 0 | — |
| The Peer Review | 234 | 0 | — |
| Writing Lab Newsletter | 354 | 0 | — |
Citation data comes from CrossRef, which aggregates reference lists deposited by publishers. Some publishers in the index — particularly Sage and Taylor & Francis — deposit complete reference lists for their journals. Others, including some open-access and society-published journals, deposit DOIs but not reference lists. Web-only journals without DOIs cannot contribute citation data at all, though they can still appear as cited works when other journals reference them. The citation network and 'Most Cited' rankings therefore reflect a partial picture, weighted toward journals whose publishers participate fully in CrossRef's reference deposit system. This is a limitation of the available infrastructure, not a judgment about the value of any journal's scholarship.
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