Landmark papers in backward citation counting: What were the most important publications for conducting research in 2023?

Whereas most citation analyses focus on times cited information of focal papers, also the cited references of the focal papers can be analyzed to reveal historical landmark papers for the research reported in the focal papers. In the current study, the cited references from all
publications in the year 2023 have been analyzed (using the program CRExplorer) to identify
the research from previous years that were most important for the research in this year: Which were the publications that have been most frequently cited in papers from 2023. To reliably identify these papers three different popular multi-disciplinary literature databases have been used (Web of Science, Scopus, and OpenAlex).