Molecular Biology and Evolution (MBE) is pleased to release a list of “Citation Classics” to celebrate and highlight the diversity and impact of MBE publications in molecular evolutionary research. “Early” (1983–2012) and “Recent” (2013–2017) Citation Classics are selected separately. This year, we chose to emphasize the durability of our early classics, by choosing articles published between 1983 and 2012 that have been highly cited within the past 5 years (2013–2017). Yearly citation counts of articles published between 1983 and 2012 were obtained from Thomson Reuters Web of Science on November 11, 2017. From the resulting set, we identified 20 publications reporting biological discoveries and 20 publications reporting methods or resources that maintained the highest citation counts from 2013 to 2017. We have chosen to designate these articles as “Golden Classics”. For the “Recent” category of Citation Classics, ten discovery and ten method/resource publications were selected based on their citations accrued per fractional years since print publication. Overall, MBE Citation Classics.