In the five years following publication, approximately 12 per cent of medical research papers and around 30 per cent of natural-and social-science papers had zero citations.

From Science Fictions by Stuart Ritchie.  Page 186.   

A somewhat depressing fact about scientific papers might be an unlikely saviour here, helping to reduce some of the damage done by such shady publication practices. It’s this: huge numbers of these papers receive barely any attention from other scientists. One analysis showed that in the five years following publication, approximately 12 per cent of medical research papers and around 30 per cent of natural-and social-science papers had zero citations.  It’s possible that these lonesome papers will get cited eventually, or that maybe the analysis missed some citations.  But whereas it’s probably a good thing that these low-quality products of the quantity-maximising system don’t have much influence, it should be a signal that something is amiss. Is our time, and our research money, being well spent on these studies that are making so little contribution to the literature? A low citation count doesn’t necessarily say anything about the quality of a paper, of course. It could, for example, be an underappreciated work. However, if scientists are publishing useless papers just to secure jobs or grants rather than advance science, it’s no wonder that so many are of no interest to their peers.