Trends in World Dental Research: an overview of the last three decades using the Web of Science

The objective of this paper is to analyse the scientific activity of dental sciences over the last 30 years. Dental-research output was identified by retrieving all citable dental documents in the Web of Science (WoS) database in the periods 1986-1988, 1996-1998, and 2006-2008. For this, a two-phase search strategy was designed: firstly, output in Dentistry, Oral Surgery, and Medicine (DOSM) Journal Citation Reports (JCR) category journals were compiled; secondly, for journal documents of other JCR categories but related to Dentistry (Non-DOSM), an innovative search strategy was designed based on a double criterion, thematic and institutional. The results showed that DOSM production increased in absolute but decreased in relative terms over the last 30 years. The JCR categories where dental researchers publish also varied. Surprisingly, the geographic distribution of the production shows a growing concentration of the steadily fewer countries, a previously undescribed phenomenon, while the thematic analysis reveals that this production continued to form four broad thematic areas encompassing the remaining specialties: Dental Materials Prosthodontics, Orthodontics, and General Dentistry. Scientific production in dentistry has changed in the past three decades both quantitatively and qualitatively, as well as their geographical distribution despite being structured around the same specialties. In this study, along with some key messages about the key shifts in publication trends, in terms of subject, where published and by whom, we propose a new methodology which could be useful to professionals as well as researchers, in which the exhaustivity and precision rates for scientific information retrieval improve.