*3.4. Methods and Strategies Used in the Most Influential Works and in the Topics of Special Importance*

3.4.1. Analysis of the Most Influential Studies

To analyze the most influential studies, we ranked the top 10 articles based on the usage and citation criteria. First, when analyzing the usage criterion, we examined data obtained from the Web from Science: the Since 2013 usage and the 180 Day Usage Count variables. However, we observed that the differences in the top 10 lists generated on their basis were relatively small, so we decided to choose the Since 2013 usage variable for creating the ranking. The results are presented in Appendix C in Table A4.

Secondly, we have prepared a ranking of the top 10 articles based on the criterion of the highest citations (Times Cited, WoS Core). The results are shown below in Appendix C in Table A5.

Finally, we analyzed which methods and strategies of studying CI in policymaking were used in the created sets of the most influential studies. As previously, we compared the percentage of method usage in the most influential studies to the percentage of method usage in all reviewed studies. This allowed us to determine which methods and strategies were used more frequently and which were used less frequently in the examined groups, in a similar way as we did before with research areas. In Figure 11 we present the visualization of this comparison. The source data are presented in Table A2 in Appendix B.

**Figure 11.** Method usage within the most influential studies compared to all the reviewed literature; 1 to 15 are as described in Table 2.

The analysis made it possible to observe interesting similarities and differences between the examined collections of research articles. First, their most common feature was an increased interest in the analysis of innovation process; respectively, DPP +29.77 in the most-read articles group, and DPP +19.77 in the most-cited texts group. Likewise, the analysis of organizational structure is an equally popular method in both groups (DPP +4.77). However, the differences are revealed mainly in the use of analysis of created values: in the group of the most often cited, it is one of the most popular approaches for half of all texts, and DPP +21.59 compared to the use in the entire study sample. However, although it is among the most widely read, this method was not more popular than the entire sample. We have the opposite situation in the case of the analysis of e-participation process: Among the most frequently read texts we can see an increased interest in this method (DPP +20.68), which is not the case with the most often cited texts (DPP +0.68).
