Publication Trends in Pediatric Dentistry Journal: A 20-year Bibliometric Analysis (1999-2018)

The purpose of this study was to assess the trends and evidence typology published in the journal Pediatric Dentistry over the last two decades (1999 to 2018). All articles from Pediatric Dentistry published between 1999 to 2018 were reviewed manually. Articles were assessed by topic, study design, level of evidence, source of funding, and country of origin. Letters to the editor, editorials, abstracts, short communications, practice guidelines, technical papers, and organization-related communications were excluded from the analysis. A total of 1,311 papers from Pediatric Dentistry were included for the final analysis. Across the 20 years, cariology (12.7 percent) was the most published topic, followed by restorative dentistry (10.6 percent) and systemic diseases (9.4 percent). The quality of evidence varied from level Ia (1.0 percent), level Ib (9.7 percent), level IIa (1.1 percent), level IIb (15.0 percent), level IIc (5.0 percent), and level III (50.1 percent). Forty-three different countries contributed to this publication history, with the USA, UK, and Brazil accounting for over half of the articles. There has been an increase in both the quantity and quality of evidence published in Pediatric Dentistry articles between 1999 and 2018 versus the previous three decades (1969 to 1998).