At the time sciencedirect.com of Elsevier had a service called "Top 25 Hottest Articles". Today this service no longer exists.
"ScienceDirect TOP25 Hottest Articles. The TOP25 was a free service which provides top 25 lists of most read articles - counted by article downloads on ScienceDirect. You can choose to view TOP25 lists by journal (from among more than 2,000 titles), or by subject (from 24 core subject areas)."
I invite fellow researchers registered with RG to lead a discussion on this topic.