Bibliometric analysis of articles published in journal of dental sciences from 2009 to 2020.

The bibliometric analysis was conducted to evaluate the publication characteristics of Journal of Dental Sciences (JDS) from ScienceDirect Online between 2009 and 2020. The most common published article type in JDS was original articles. The top four highest number of published articles were related to oral and maxillofacial surgery, periodontology, endodontology, and oral pathology. The most productive geographic region for articles was Asia. Taiwan ranked in the highest country in terms of successful publication in JDS. The impact factor of JDS ranged from 0.107 in 2009 to 2.080 in 2020. As compared with years between 2009 and 2014, there was a significant increase in impact factor during 2015-2020 (P = 0.026). By this bibliometric analysis, JDS needs to attract more audience outside the Asia to gain the higher international influence.

Introduction

Bibliometric analysis is a mathematical and statistical evaluation to analyze books, papers, or other publications. The study of bibliometric analysis of journal publication characteristics is important because the themes published, geographical distribution, and impact factor will determine to the future journal authors and readers. These will also enable the scientists to identify the key or hot topics for study and to explore the updated insights into a particular research area.,

The Journal of Dental Sciences (JDS) is the publication of the Association for Dental Sciences of the Republic of China, Taipei, Taiwan. The JDS was launched in 2006, and the covered topics included all the fields of basic and clinical dentistry. Being one of the most prestigious dental journals in Taiwan, it was indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded since 2008. A bibliometric analysis of JDS is of special interest because the JDS is the only one dental journal with impact factor in Taiwan. However, little is known about the bibliometric study of JDS. Therefore, articles published in JDS were identified and evaluated by using descriptive bibliometric analysis from 2009 to 2020.

Materials and methods

An electronic retrospective bibliometric search was performed to review the published articles in JDS from 2009 to 2020. All published articles were obtained from ScienceDirect Online on July 23, 2021. However, the articles defined as editorial, corrigendum, and article in press were excluded. In such type of study, ethical review is not required. This descriptive bibliometric analysis was performed to analyze the number of articles, article type, research category, and geographical distribution of the articles between 2009 and 2020. Due to JDS is a multiple disciplinary journal, the published articles were divided into 17 research categories. After reviewing the characteristics of articles, each article could be related up to 3 categories in this study. The geographical distribution was recognized on the address of the correspondence author. To ensure the validity and reliability of this study, the first author Dr. Liu carried out the screening and subsequent analysis of the articles 3 times. In case of discrepancy, the opinion of a second author was requested to achieve consensus. The impact factor was based on Clarivate Analytics Web of Science, Journal Citation Reports database.

All extracted data were transferred into Microsoft Excel for the descriptive bibliometric analysis. Chi-square and Fisher's exact tests were used for categorical variables such as article type and impact factor by SPSS version 18 (SPSS, Chicago, IL, USA). Probability levels of <0.05 were considered significant.

Results

In this study, 770 document articles were identified published in JDS from 2009 to 2020, The distribution of article type is shown in Fig. 1. The most common article type published in JDS was the original articles (n = 574; 74.5%). The association between year and article type is shown in Table 1. As compared with years between 2009 and 2014, there was a significant increase in the article number during 2015–2020 (P < 0.001).

Figure 1

The trends of identified JDS articles between 2009 and 2020 form ScienceDirect Online.

Table 1

The association between year and publication characteristics of JDS.

	2009–2020 N = 770	2009–2014 N = 306	2015–2020 N = 464	p value
Types of article				<0.001
Perspectives	5 (0.6)	0 (0.0)	5 (1.1)
Review Articles	19 (2.5)	9 (2.9)	10 (2.2)
Original Articles	574 (74.5)	237 (77.5)	337 (72.6)
Case Reports	51 (6.6)	32 (10.5)	19 (4.1)
Short Communications	19 (2.5)	8 (2.6)	11 (2.4)
Research Letters	5 (0.6)	0 (0.0)	5 (1.1)
Correspondence	91 (11.8)	18 (5.9)	73 (15.7)
Letters to the Editor	6 (7.8)	2 (0.7)	4 (0.9)
Research categorya				–
Oral Maxillofacial Surgery	135 (17.5)	43 (14.1)	92 (19.8)
Periodontology	129 (16.8)	49 (16.0)	80 (17.2)
Endodontology	126 (16.4)	48 (15.7)	78 (16.8)
Oral Pathology	121 (15.7)	40 (13.1)	81 (17.5)
Prosthodontology	95 (12.3)	51 (16.7)	44 (9.5)
Oral Health	64 (8.3)	34 (11.1)	30 (6.5)
Orthodontology	59 (7.7)	24 (7.8)	35 (7.5)
Operative Dentistry	54 (7.0)	30 (9.8)	24 (5.2)
Oral Implantology	54 (7.0)	18 (5.9)	36 (7.8)
Dental Material	52 (6.8)	29 (9.5)	23 (5.0)
Pedodontology	50 (6.5)	19 (6.2)	31 (6.7)
Oral Radiology	37 (4.8)	9 (2.9)	28 (6.0)
Dental Education	18 (2.3)	5 (1.6)	13 (2.8)
Temporomandibular Joint	15 (1.9)	7 (2.3)	8 (1.7)
Special Needs	12 (1.6)	4 (1.3)	8 (1.7)
Medical Administration	12 (1.6)	5 (1.6)	7 (1.5)
COVID-19	7 (0.9)	0 (0.0)	7 (1.5)
Others	8 (1.0)	6 (2.0)	2 (0.4)
Geographic distribution				–
Taiwan	376 (48.8)	153 (50.0)	223 (48.1)
Turkey	122 (15.8)	72 (23.5)	50 (10.8)
China	67 (8.7)	14 (4.6)	53 (11.4)
Japan	45 (5.8)	11 (3.6)	34 (7.3)
Korea	33 (4.3)	7 (2.3)	26 (5.6)
Thailand	21 (2.7)	5 (1.6)	16 (3.4)
Italy	13 (1.7)	3 (1.0)	10 (2.2)
Saudi Arabia	12 (1.6)	2 (0.7)	10 (2.2)
Iran	8 (1.0)	7 (2.3)	1 (0.2)
India	8 (1.0)	2 (0.7)	6 (1.3)
Impact factor	0.7 ± 0.5	0.3 ± 0.2	1.0 ± 0.6	p = 0.026

--Represents the descriptive statistics for research category and geographic distribution without p value.

Each article could be related up to 3 categories in this study.

The type of research categories is shown in Fig. 2. The top five research categories were related to the field of oral and maxillofacial surgery, periodontology, endodontology, oral pathology, and prosthodontology. The descriptive analysis between year and research categories is shown in Table 1.

Figure 2

The distribution of research categories after reviewing the articles published in JDS.

Due to COVID-19 outbreak, early disease recognition could minimize the spread by implementation of public health policy. Therefore, the articles related to COVID-19 published in JDS were extracted to further analysis. The first article about COVID-19 was published in June, 2020. Only 7 articles related to COVID-19 were published in JDS in 2020. Interestingly, 3 of them were listed as the top 10 citied articles and ranked in the first, sixth, and eighth place with the number of citations 149, 13, and 11, respectively, from ScienceDirect Online assessed on August 2, 2021.

The geographical distribution from 5 continents is shown in Fig. 3. Asia ranked the first place, followed by Europe, America, Africa, and Oceania. The descriptive analysis between year and geographical distribution is shown in Table 1. The highest number of published articles came from Taiwan, followed by Turkey, China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Italy, and Saudi Arabia.

Figure 3

The geographical distribution from 5 continents based on the correspondence author's country.

The annual trend of impact factor is illustrated in Fig. 4. The impact factor ranged from 0.107 in 2009 to 2.080 in 2020. The association between year and impact factor is shown in Table 1. As compared with years between 2009 and 2014, there was a significant increase in impact factor during 2015–2020 (P = 0.026).

Figure 4

The trends of JDS impact factor from 2009 to 2020.

Discussion

In this survey, the most common article type in JDS was the original articles that constituted up to 74.5% of all articles. It is not surprised that the original article usually represents new and significant contributions to the research field with higher scientific evidences. The number of case report was found significantly decreased and disappeared from 2019. Although case report could be interesting with merits, it is recognized with lower evidence because of the limitations in methodology or statistical analysis. Too many case reports in a journal also resulted in lowering the journal's impact factor. The number of correspondence article in JDS was found to be significantly increased during 2015–2020. Under the surveillance of correspondence articles, most of them represented the short case report. This would compensate the decreasing number of case report. In JDS, rare diseases, unusual therapeutic approaches, and new findings related to diagnostics or treatment issues can be published as correspondence articles.

Bibliometric analysis is increasingly used for the review of trends and progress in different research fields. In this study, the articles related to oral and maxillofacial surgery, periodontology, and endodontology were more than 50% of all published articles in JDS. Numbers of publications may be affected by the variation in research capacity, local research culture, and relative funding.

During the current COVID-19 crisis, scientists, clinicians, or policy-makers throughout the world pay remarkable attention to this newly disease. The keyword of COVID-19 has become a hot topic of bibliometric network analysis in 2020. The academic data via peer review and subsequently published in scientific journals provide the basis for future research and guide decision-making in COVID-19 prevention and treatments. In addition, COVID-19 also has the great impact and challenge on dentistry. The hot topic and speed of publication will be the important factors such as Immediacy Index for bibliometric analysis of a journal. Perhaps, a special issue focused on the challenges and opportunities for dentistry during COVID-19 pandemic in JDS will attract more audiences and earn more influences.

Recently, the use of bibliometric studies is popular to exhibit the research output and growth of a journal. Among the six continents, Asia ranked first with 706 published articles (91.69%) in JDS, and among them 376 articles (48.83%) were published in Taiwan. Although, JDS is the top one dental journal in Taiwan, we still need a strategy to increase the international influence and the number of publications in other regions outside the Asia.

The impact factor is one of the citation metrics of scientific articles and has become a tool to evaluate the scientific publications. However, understanding the impact of an article on real scientific knowledge is not easy. There are some limitations of this bibliometric analysis. First, a bibliometric analysis only provides the current situation based on the certain database used. The results of this study might demonstrate discrepancy from different databases. Second, more deep insight evaluations for JDS are required such as the most top cited articles, research topics, etc. For its readers and potential future authors. Finally, this analysis was limited to one journal from its own country. Further studies would be necessary to survey or compare the indexed dental or medical journals with impact factor in Taiwan.

From this bibliometric analysis, there is a visible growth in terms of publications and impact factor of JDS from 2009 to 2020. It is expected that these publication characteristics of JDS will grow in the future. This article suggests that the strategy used to attract wider audience outside the Asia is necessary for the further development of JDS.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors have no conflicts of interest relevant to this article.