Bibliometrics Evaluation of Scientific Journals and Country Research Output of Dental Research in Latin America Using Scimago Journal and Country Rank

Abstract

Innovations in dental sciences are potentially disruptive; however, the language barrier in the case of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) limits access to scientific studies. There is a necessity to measure the development of dental research across the LAC region, where economic power and postgraduate education access vary significantly. This article aims to analyze documents, citations, and journals and compare the SJR, H-Index, citation rates, and Co-occurrence Networks (Keywords) between dental journals published in LAC and the rest of the world, according to the report of Scimago Journal and Country Rank, between the years 1996 and 2020. Results show that Brazil leads dental research in the LAC, scoring the highest number of published documents, citations, and SJR metrics. The mean H-index and SJR of LAC dentistry journals are significantly lower than those of other regions (p < 0.03); however, there are no significant differences in the mean total citations in the last 3 years between LAC and other regions (p > 0.15). This suggests that the articles published in dentistry journals from LAC are being cited in similar proportions to the journals of other regions, but a large portion of these citations came from publications with low scientific impact.