Dental research in Iran: a bibliometric analysis of electronically available literature

To carry out a bibliometric analysis of all electronically available dental literature in Iran from 1983 to 2006, in order to study availability and examine trends.

Accessing all electronically available Iranian dental articles published in domestic journals, and comparing the results with Iranian dental articles published in Pubmed. The following data were collected from each article: name of journal, year of publication, number of authors, gender of corresponding author, academic levels of authors, main language of article, language of abstract, study environment, population studied, field of dentistry, type of article, design strategy, design of study, and analysis design.

In terms of publications in domestic journals, a total of 1,994 dental articles were electronically available, published in six different dental journals in Iran. Majority of articles, 84.5%, were original studies. In terms of design strategy, 49.7% of studies were cross-sectional, 35.5% were prospective, and 14.8% were retrospective studies. The main language of 99.3% of articles was Farsi, and 0.7% was English. Majority of articles, 38.7%, were written by two authors. Gender of corresponding author in 66.7% of articles was male, and in 33.3% of articles was female. There was an increasing trend in percentage of original studies, clinical trials and female corresponding authors. In terms of publications in Pubmed, a total of 75 dental articles from Iran were electronically available. Significant differences were revealed in terms of number of authors, study types and design strategies when compared to publications in domestic journals.

A number of encouraging trends were identified, which is a reflection of improvements in quality of domestic electronic dental literature. However, as the majority of articles are written in Farsi, availability of research evidence to the international community is limited. Overall, results of this study indicate the need for future bibliometric analyses which can be used to construct a comprehensive database that will assist in evidence-based clinical decision making.