Scientometric analysis of vital pulp therapy studies

To present a scientometric analysis of the entire body of scientific publications in the field of vital pulp therapy (VPT) and analyse the research trends and popular topics.

A comprehensive literature search was conducted in the Web of Science and Scopus databases on 21 August 2020 to identify all articles related to VPT. The publications were reviewed and basic research parameters were collected, including publication year, patterns of authorship, geographical distribution of scientific productions, journals, h-index, study design and keyword analysis. Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar databases were used for the citation analysis of the ten top cited articles. The data were analysed using VOSviewer and visualized by tables and diagrams.

In total, 1197 VPT-associated items were identified from 64 countries in 176 journals. The majority of papers were published in the Journal of Endodontics. The United States of America was the leading country for number of publications, citations, h-index and collaborations. The distribution of articles based on study design was as follows: basic science (35%), clinical (27%), observational studies (26%) and review publications (12%). The most frequently occurring keywords were pulpotomy, mineral trioxide aggregate, calcium hydroxide and direct pulp capping.

This scientometric analysis outlines the evolutionary trends and the productivity of researchers and countries in the field of vital pulp therapy. Research output is dominated by basic science articles involving innovative materials published in high impact factor dental journals.