Systematic Reviews in Dental Research: A Bibliometric Analysis of Contribution from Indian Dentists During 1948-2022.

Abstract

Although systematic reviews (SRs) are the backbone of evidence-based dentistry, they have appeared infrequently in dental literature and their importance may not be recognized by dentists. So, this study aimed to identify SRs in dental research contributed by Indian dentists to the PubMed database during 1948-2022 and describes their epidemiological and descriptive characteristics. An electronic search of the PubMed database was performed from 1948 through September 2022. SRs were considered for inclusion if they were related to oral health and published by Indian dentists as the first author. From this collection, the following characteristics of SRs were described: name of the journal, type of journal (e.g., general dentistry, specialty dentistry, non-dental), year of publication, author's affiliation, and focus of the SR. The search identified 439 SRs in dentistry indexed in the PubMed database during 1948-2022. There were only 5 SRs published from 2007 to 2010 with maximum publications during the year 2021 (n = 114; 25.97%). About 32.35% of the SRs (n = 142) were published in 10 journals with the maximum contribution from the Journal of Conservative Dentistry (n = 22; 5.01%). The majority of the SRs were published in the field of Pedodontics and Preventive Dentistry (n = 72; 16.40%), followed by Conservative Dentistry and Endodontics (n = 63; 14.35%). The contribution of SRs in dental research from India is small but growing. There is a clear need to improve SRs in dental research qualitatively and quantitatively.